


Turncoat

by TaFuilLiom



Series: Septenary [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Post-3x05, Undercover AU kinda, but ignoring literally everything else lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-20 09:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13715268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: She turned the card over and over. Turncoat was scrawled underneath a number, ostensibly the one she had to call.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't stop listening to that stupid New Rules tune and thinking about Alex and Maggie having a messy few weeks following their break up, but this took on a whole other tone when I got started. I didn't know whether to post it all as a oneshot or split it into chapters, so here we are. All mistakes are my own, obviously x

Waiting for her car to warm up, Maggie blew into cupped hands. The early morning radio filtering through her cruiser was her only company. She hated that one month of the year National City actually got anywhere near cold. She hated working the graveyard shift. She hated when her CI called her at 2am to come and meet him from the other side of the city. 

She hated her life, right now. 

Every day was an uphill climb, just to fall into bed and start all over again the next morning.  

And worst of all, that same pop song that blasted on every station every single damn day was now playing. 

Maggie pounded a heating vent in frustration. She should have brought her bike to work instead of relying on police cruisers tonight. She could have whizzed through the city, got the information, and been back inside the semi-toasty bullpen in the time it took for this car to warm up.

Just as she was about to start the engine, her phone started to belt out its shrill, two tone melody. She knew who it was. The same person it was around this time every night, on cue for the hour.

Despite the alarm bells ringing in her ears, Maggie picked up.

_ “Maggie…” _

She cut to the chase. “Danvers, not now.”

_ “Please, just...just listen to me…” _

Maggie waited, static fizzing along the line. She heard a shuddery intake of breath and then;

_ “I miss you.” _

“I’m sure you do.”

_ “Don’t you miss me?” _

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Alex-”

_ “Just say it. Please. Lie to me.” _

“It wouldn’t be a lie, Alex. That’s the problem,” she said, resting her forehead on the steering wheel. Slurred or not, Alex's voice appealed to that that emptiness inside. “Just drink some water and go to bed, okay?”

_ “Maggie, I love you. This isn’t-” _

“The alcohol talking?” Maggie scoffed and snapped back up, her anger surging back. “Go to bed, Alex. Stop calling me in the middle of the night. It’s selfish.” 

Jabbing her thumb at her screen to end the call, Maggie immediately brought up Kara’s number, and called. It took a few dials, but eventually a groggy Kara answered.

_ “Maggie? What-?” _

“Go and check on your sister.” She hung up the phone and threw it on the passenger seat.

~

A month of frosty run-ins at crime scenes, and Maggie was at the end of her tether. 

Alex would call her up, drunk, begging her for another chance. Yet as soon as the sun was up and they were face to face, Alex barely acknowledged her. 

She watched Alex dealing with two agents at the edge of the scene. They were plain-clothed and blending in with the crowd, Maggie only recognising them as DEO because she had seen them at headquarters. 

She thought they might have had invitations to the wedding. 

She got into her cruiser, and to her chagrin, caught Alex’s look on the way past: she seemed lost, as if Maggie hadn’t been paying enough attention to her hard exterior act, and was disappointed that she was leaving already. 

On shift a few days later, Maggie was working through an autopsy report when Detective Farson shuffled into the bullpen. 

“Your ex is here. Seems like a real raging-.”

Maggie put her pen down with a huff, pushing her seat back and heading for the door. “Where?”

He leaned against the cooler in the corner, pouring water into a paper cup. “Interrogation room B.”

She stared at him with disbelief and he shrugged, taking his water away too early. The trickles poured over the side of the cooler. Shaking her head, she stalked to the room in question, finding Alex pacing in front of the desk. 

She closed the door behind her. “What is this about?”

Alex’s eyes looked her up and down. “Hello to you too.”

Maggie cursed the agent’s expertise in body language, hoping the meagre lighting in the room was enough to conceal her cheeks heating up. “Stop messing around. You’re here on business, so let’s get down to it.”

Alex fixed her suit jacket around her shoulders. “That gun that you handed over to us yesterday passed through more hands than the information we were given, and we can prove it.”

“Okay.” It was a pretty serious allegation, but nothing Maggie had to do with. 

She wasn’t the lead on the case, passing it to one of the junior detectives at the scene. The crime wasn't serious, all things considered. An unregistered gun from Heronia discharged and was abandoned in an NC-Market store parking lot. No one had been hurt, nothing had been damaged, except for the tree whose branches were now a little singed.

Alex took a step closer. “We need to talk about the problem your department has with the chain of evidence. This isn't the first time this has happened.”

“Me, personally?” Maggie crossed her arms and stood her ground, not letting Alex intimidate her. 

“No, not  _ you _ , Maggie.” 

“In that case, why don’t you take this up with my superior?”

Alex faltered. Her true intentions flickered over her features for a mere second before the cold mask was back, but it was enough for Maggie to get the leverage she needed as she prowled closer. 

“See, you just wanted an excuse to talk to me, and that’s fine,” she said, willing her throat not to close up. “But every time you do talk to me, you refuse to bring up the phone calls.”

The woman in front of her let an involuntary whine like someone had punched her in the stomach, hard edges forgotten entirely. “Maggie…”

“Alex, or Agent Danvers, or whatever hat you’re wearing today-” Maggie waved her hands around. “You need to decide whether you wanna really talk this out with me, or just keep this professional. Because I can’t do this hot and cold thing. I can’t go back and forth with you. Get your shit together, and decide what you want. Then call me. Sober.”

She didn’t give Alex time to respond before she strode over to the door and threw it open.

“Now, get out of my station.”

After that, the calls stopped. 

~

It took 9 days-  _ not that she was counting _ \- but Alex eventually did call her. Sober.

_ “You’re right. I’ve been a mess, and I’m not excusing it. I just thought I’d let you know there’s still some things here that you might want to come and get.” _

It was the nicest invitation to the lion’s den than Maggie had ever received. 

They were both off on a Tuesday afternoon, and she made the arrangements to come to Alex’s apartment and collect the items she had left behind. 

When Alex opened the door, she was her sock soles; a sign that she would be much less combative than she had been the previous times she and Maggie had crossed paths. It buoyed Maggie up from the apprehension she had struggled against on the way over. 

Alex indicated a box on the dining table. “That’s the last of it.”

“That jacket you’re wearing is mine.”

She looked down in surprise, stretching out the sleeves. “Oh. I’m sorry. I think I’ve mismatched it with one of mine.”

Maggie sighed, bracing her hands on her hips. “It’s fine. Keep it. Looks better on you anyway.” 

Somehow, they both gravitated to the box. It was mostly folded clothes, but there was a black object on top that caught Maggie’s eye. 

It was an air hockey puck that they had pocketed from an arcade-cum-bar they visited a week before Cadmus and Jeremiah blew Alex’s life apart. At the time, it was careless fun. Jokes about a cop committing a minor felony led to making out on the couch. 

(And _ more _ , which Alex had been gaining confidence with each time). 

But in retrospect, the night was an innocent, flirty night where they weren’t struck down with the pressures and darkness of their jobs. They were two women falling in love, harmless and frivolous, basking in the company.

Both of them reached out for the puck at the same time, their hands bumping into one another. 

Maggie remembered her high school science classes, when they burned ribbons of magnesium. Once the silvery strip touched the flame, it went up in a bright, white light. It shone, intense throughout, until it was finally consumed.

When Alex’s eyes met hers, they touched the flame. 

The kiss Alex seared onto her lips sparked through her entire body. The puck clattered to the floor. Without thinking about it, she shoved her own jacket off of Alex’s shoulders. The box of folded clothes skidded across the table as Alex lifted her onto it. 

When Maggie bit her lower lip, Alex whimpered in that way that drove her crazy, and then her world became a tunnel. She arched into Alex’s hands as they roamed her body, dipping under her shirt. She slid her hand into Alex’s hair, kissing her deeper, hungrier. She knew exactly where this was leading, and was unwilling to let her head speak for her anymore.  

After a moment or two of fumbling, Alex had her jeans open and her fingertips slipped under her waistband, and then Alex was inside her, possessing her in a way she would be ashamed of if it didn’t feel so good. She moaned into the crook of Alex’s neck, swept away with the pleasure, the rawness of the actions. 

When her release came, it burned up her mind in a bright, white light, and she was consumed. Alex slowed, pressing her lips to Maggie’s thundering pulse, and then stilled completely.

Coming back, Maggie untangled her hand from where it had gripped into Alex’s hair, using it to keep her upright. The only sound in the apartment was her ragged breathing, yet she swore she could hear the very atmosphere crashing down around them. 

She couldn’t fight the shudder as Alex carefully pulled out of her, and leaned away, seemingly shocked at the turn of events. 

“I…” The experience was sinking in, her eyes wide with distress.

“It’s okay,” Maggie assured thickly. 

It wasn’t. She had just had sex-  _ if she was honest, pretty dirty fucking _ \- with her ex on the dining table. What she stressed was, as Alex went into panic mood, it was all consensual. At the end of the day, they were both to blame. She wanted it, took as much as Alex could give.

“I should go,” she said quietly.

Alex turned away, and Maggie swallowed at the daunting implication that she couldn’t stand to even look at her. 

Somehow, she made it out of the apartment with what she needed to take. She got into the elevator, and out of it, and into her police cruiser. She made it back to her own apartment, managed to put the box on her kitchen island and pour herself a glass of water. 

It was only later, slipping down to curl up on the floor of her shower, that she realised her jacket was still lying on Alex’s floor. 

~

They officially ended on good terms, if any break up had good terms. 

But every death had a rattle, and this seemed to be it. 

It was running into each other after a bad day in the same bar, it was the pretence of friendly with the undertone of unreleased tension. It was wanting more than thinking. It was sharing a cab to Alex’s apartment. It was unadulterated lust. And it was rougher than they’d ever been, for the most part. 

“Do you like this?” Alex murmured, eyelids hooded as she tipped her head back to look up at Maggie above her. “Punishing me?”

Alex could stop her, could break her neck in a heartbeat if she wanted to. Maggie prided herself in her strength, but she had nothing compared with Alex’s hand to hand combat skillset. Besides, if Alex didn’t want it, she would have said. 

While Maggie didn’t accept silence as consent, she knew that if nothing else this had been an equal battle. Alex shoving her down onto the bed, hand wrapped around her throat, pressing on her carotid and jugular just to make her head spin before she came proved that. And she hadn’t exactly complained when Maggie began to return the favour. 

Maggie concluded that Alex meant this emotionally.

“You like the punishment.” She twisted her fingers for emphasis, enjoying how Alex’s body bent up towards her. 

In the thick silence of the aftermath, when they had both caught their breath and were staring at the ceiling, Maggie realised they had taken something bittersweet and sucked the sweetness right out of it. Getting up and fumbling in the dark for her clothes, she thought about how this thing that had occurred twice now made them ugly, and full of regret. 

Buttoning her shirt as well as she could in the pale moonlight, Maggie forced the words out in a neutral tone.  

“This can’t happen again. It was never us, Alex.”

Alex didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at her, but the single glance Maggie allowed herself revealed tear stains on Alex’s cheeks. She walked to the door, waiting for Alex to speak, but she never did. 

The hockey puck was on the table near the door. She reached for it, slipping it into her jacket pocket. 

Leaving the apartment, Maggie was glad she at least made it to the elevator before the tears came. 

In the end, she let Alex keep the jacket.

~

Maggie’s skin prickled as she went to and from her new apartment block every night for the next week. By the seventh night, she knew for certain she was being tracked. 

A black SUV had tailed her across town, and she abandoned her usual route home in order to test her theory. No matter where she led the car, it followed. Eventually she parked and waited. The vehicle pulled over to the other side of the street, parking a few yards behind.

With shaky hands, Maggie checked that the gun in her waistband was loaded, and as smoothly as she could, got out of her cruiser. 

She entered the diner she had parked outside. There wasn’t a huge number there for a Sunday night, but it was public enough for her to feel safe. She ordered coffee, ignoring the way the waterline jumped in her unsteady hand, and ducked into a booth to wait. 

Soon enough, a man and a woman in ill-fitting suits slipped into the booth opposite her. 

“Evening,” Maggie said levelly. 

“Detective Maggie Sawyer?” the woman asked.

“I better be. Otherwise, who the hell have you been following for the last week?”

The man gave her a tight smile. “My name is Agent Withers, and this is my colleague Agent Holloway. We’re with the FBI.”

“As if the cheap suits and arrogance doesn’t give you away,” Maggie quipped.

The agents shared a look, and Agent Holloway sighed.

“We've been following you, Detective Sawyer, because we wanted to see if you were clean or not. We may have a proposition for you.”

Maggie stiffened at what was being left unsaid. “You vetted me?”

“We did,” Holloway admitted. 

She knew that when it came to law enforcement, every so often the apple had a rotten core. Yet the realisation that there were dirty cops in her precinct, her colleagues, slapped her square on both cheeks.

This was the reason she didn’t take partners. 

“Details?” she asked, staring into the black coffee.

“You and three other detectives that we have vetted are going to go undercover. Partly posing as yourselves, partly posing as the corrupt personas that you’ll be given,” Holloway explained.

“So, I’m going bad as myself?” At the twin nods, she eased back against the booth, leather creaking. “This might test my acting ability.”

“If you’re discovered by a mole, we can’t help you. We can’t compromise the situation for the other agents.” 

“I get it. If I’m found out, I’m on my own. And if I’m on my own, I’m dead.”

Somehow, the sip of black coffee she took wasn’t as bitter on her tongue as that statement. 

“You have some time to think about it,” Holloway said. "If you're in, you call the number on this card and say the word password."

With a nod and the exchanging of a business card, the agents slipped out of the booth and back into the night. Maggie watched through the window as they got back into their SUV and drove off. She turned the card over and over.  _ Turncoat _ was scrawled underneath a number, ostensibly the one she had to call. 

Eventually, she left her coffee unfinished on the table. 

A week later, Detective Maggie Sawyer went rogue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I'm not a doctor. Secondly, don't hate me x

Kicking the stand of her bike down, she hung around the alley for a minute to make sure she wasn’t followed.

Maggie pulled off her helmet, whispering the password and slipping inside the alien bar. She shrugged her black hood up as she kept to the shadows, sliding into the booth at the end of the room.

“What gives?” she asked gruffly, putting the helmet on the table.

“Hello to you too, Mags,” Darla said dryly. 

“I told you that the number I gave you should only be used for emergencies.”

“This  _ is _ an emergency-”

“It’s only been three weeks.” 

“You wanna stop jumping down my throat and let me explain?” 

Maggie sat back with a huff, glancing around at the other bar patrons for a second before waving a hand. “So?”

Darla leaned forward, her expression sombre. “You know Tony? He works as an EMT? Comes around here sometimes?”

“Yeah, why?” A stone dropped into the well of Maggie’s stomach. Somewhere in her subconscious, a thought was snowballing, even if she wasn’t aware of _what_  yet.

“He came in here tonight asking me if I had seen you around. Said that he was just off shift and his last job was a bad accident. Car collided with a motorcycle at an intersection downtown. Said the woman who was on the bike was the one he always saw you in here with, but since he hadn’t seen you around lately with her, he just wanted to get in touch.”

The breath left Maggie’s lungs. She spent only four months as a traffic cop, and it was enough. Days were spent doing nothing but pointing a speed gun at the passing line of cars. Nights were spent watching firemen cut dying children out of twisted vehicles. 

She was in the bar, but all she could smell was burnt rubber and exhaust fumes. 

Darla shifted uncomfortably. “She’s alive. But it’s bad, or, I guess- I don’t really know anything. But I just thought I should contact you, just in case.”

_ Just in case _ . Maggie followed the groove patterns on the sticky wooden table, her whole body sinking into numbness. 

“How bad?”

“Mags-”

“How bad?” she ground out, teeth clenched together.

“She’s in ICU at National City General.”

Maggie swiped a hand over her mouth. She had only thrown up once in public, in the bushes after a college party, but she thought that this might become the second time. 

“I need to see her. I...I don’t even.”

It was only when Darla reached over to gently take her hand that she realised she was shaking. 

“Mags, take a breath,” she coaxed. “You know the girl I’m seeing right now is an ICU nurse? I explained there were, like, strange circumstances, and she agreed to sneak you in for a while tonight.” 

Maggie stood on weak knees, the bar hazy around her. She let Darla lead her towards the door, trying to suppress the visions of motorcycle crash victims that she had responded to when she worked in traffic.

Her keys jingled as she rooted in her pocket for them. 

“Absolutely not. No. Get a cab,” Darla warned, confiscating her helmet. 

“I can-” 

“You shouldn’t be getting on a bike after news like this." She shook her head at Maggie's next attempt to protest. "You definitely shouldn’t be getting on one considering the context.” 

She dragged Maggie away from her bike towards the mouth of the alley, scouring the street for cabs. Like a lamb learning to walk for the first time, Maggie followed unsteadily. Darla brought up her Uber app, tapping as she spoke. 

“Her name is Grace,” she explained. “She’ll meet you in the E.R. reception and take you straight to her. But you can’t get caught.” 

“Because I’m supposed to be undercover?” Maggie said weakly.

“No, I don’t give a fuck about your mission. Don’t get my girlfriend in trouble.” Darla looked up. “Six minutes. Black tesla.” 

“Thanks,” Maggie said, her stomach still behaving like the world was tipping on its axis. 

Darla nodded sharply, squeezed her shoulder, and left her on the street, waiting. 

~

A motorcycle accident at a downtown junction. Because  _ of course _ Alex Danvers, the bio-engineer, secret agent who faced down deadly situations every single day, would be taken out by something so normal. 

Grace, Darla’s girlfriend, was fussing at some tubes around the bed. Maggie didn’t know what most of these machines did, or tracked, except for one. It didn’t seem right that Alex’s heart should be contained in a line jumping on screen, or announced by beeps from a monitor. Alex had a heart bigger and stronger and warmer than all of that. 

Maggie had seen her with some bad knocks, but never like this. 

Bruising mapped all over, making the unmarked skin pale. Maggie traced the crimson tube up to the bag hanging above her, wondering how much blood Alex had lost. The casts and bandages told stories of splintered bones. 

The shallow rising and falling of her chest was the only sign of life. 

“You’re in bad shape, Danvers,” Maggie whispered, taking in the each detail like the flash of a crime scene photographer; the neck brace, the swelling around her hairline, the tubes down her throat. 

“The helmet saved her,” Grace said quietly. “She was thrown off her bike like a ragdoll.” When Maggie didn’t say anything, she stuttered anxiously. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve been on a long shift and it’s just Darla said-”

“It’s fine,” Maggie said. “I’d rather you just gave it to me straight anyway.” 

“I usually have so much more tact than this,” Grace lamented, and then checked the IV drip. 

“How did this...?”

“Guy jumped a red.” 

“Fucking-” Maggie swore, gripping the railing of the bed. 

Grace stood opposite her, regarding Alex with compassion. “Her mom and sister are still around. They just went to get some coffee. I know you’re not supposed to be here, so I can hold them off for a little while if you want some time.”

Running into Eliza and Kara would be a nightmare, not only because of her current operation, but because of this very situation. What went on outside this room was bad enough, nevermind having to face them over Alex’s hospital bed.

She bit the edge of her thumb, picking apart her options. Her gut had her rooted to the spot, her head was already three stories down the stairwell and heading for the streets.

She pressed forward to the bed, focusing on Alex’s peaceful features. “She isn’t in any pain, is she?”

Grace moved to the doorway, where she stayed, suspended. “We have her on a high dosage of morphine, so I don’t think so.”

Maggie nodded. “Can she hear me?” 

“I think so. Sometimes patients wake up and remember their loved ones talking to them.”

One more question was swinging in a revolving door, not leaving unless she booted it out-

“Is she going to die?” She saw the pained hesitation on Grace’s features, and said, “Straight up, no wish-wash?”

“If she makes it through the night, she should pull through.”

She nodded, then the nurse left her alone. As if she were touching fine china, Maggie touched her fingertips to Alex’s. It sparked a memory, one she had fixated on when they were engaged. When they choose actual wedding rings at the jewellers, Maggie had watched Alex deliberating over the cut of a diamond stud and been struck by the fact that this woman was going to be her wife.

“Hey, Alex. I uh, I still imagine our wedding sometimes,” she started. “I don’t think that’s what a goodbye should start with, but it’s all I got.” 

They would be wives, now. She gently brushed her thumb over the bare ring finger of Alex’s hand. It was envisioning their wedding that was her happy place. Should she be caught undercover, tortured or maimed by those she was trying to deceive, then imagining Alex in her wedding dress was where she would escape to.  

“I used to imagine I’d be shaking so hard that I couldn’t get the ring on your finger, or I’d choke so much that I couldn’t get to the actual, y’know, I do.”

She desperately wanted to hear Alex’s voice. She pressed the palm of her free hand into her eyes, but it did nothing to stop the sob that jerked through her. Grief, premature, eclipsing the hope inside.

“Do me a favour? Don’t die, huh?” She sniffed, rubbing at her eyes when the tears didn’t stop. “Don’t do that thing they do in TV shows where they just crash outta nowhere. Stay alive, okay? Please? I promise we'll talk when this is all over.” 

Would she have been a widow in the morning?

“I love you,” she hissed, leaning against the bed and trying to stop the hammering in her chest, still clutching Alex’s hand. 

“Please, I still love you.”

~

Once she had released the whirlwind inside and gotten a grip of herself, Maggie sobered and knew her time was up. She inched closer and kissed the smooth skin of Alex’s forehead, taking one long last look at the figure in the bed.

Then she stepped back into the corridor and, by extension, her status quo. 

She flipped her hood up around her head, but when she saw the flash of blonde hair coming through the swing doors, she realised it was a second too late.

“Maggie?”

_ Shit. _

She kept walking, her footsteps quickening until she escaped into a stairwell, but she was never going to outrun a kryptonian. Kara was in front of her in seconds, blocking the stairs.

“Oh my god, it is you.”

Maggie sighed and lowered her hood, swiping her eyes for good measure.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Not really at liberty to say, Kara.”

“What do you mean? Are you working on a deep case or something?”

“Or something,” Maggie said. She bounced from foot to foot, itching to get out of the place - _ where Alex Danvers could die in a hospital bed-  _ She tried to get around Kara. 

“This is how you want to leave it?” Kara challenged, leaving Maggie floored. She was impressed. Kara had put on her big sister’s fierceness. “We thought you disappeared. Alex was looking for you. She thought you were dead!” 

Maggie scoffed, thinking about the tasks that she had already had to perform to earn favour with a corrupt narcotics handler. “Well, maybe that’s the best way.”

Kara stood back a step, aghast. “How could you be so selfish?”

Maggie’s agitation mounted. She chased Kara for that step and then another. “Me? Selfish? I’m supposed to be undercover, Kara. I shouldn’t even be here. Stop being so naive.”

Kara’s head jerked back. “You really are undercover?”

“Yes,” she admitted, squaring up and lowering her voice. “The only reason I’m telling you is because I know you won’t compromise me,  _ Supergirl _ .”

Kara’s eyes darted over her face before she nodded imperceptibly. “What will I tell her? When she wakes up?”

The words faltered, betraying the  _ if _ , not when. Because Alex was critical. Stable now, but who knew if it would last?

Maggie looked at their shoes, at the bare concrete of the stairwell. “Tell her some guys I put away years ago in Gotham came with a grudge and jumped me. You heard it through the grapevine when you were busting ass.”

She heard the sharp intake of breath. “I couldn’t, Maggie…”

“Or tell her the truth.” She walked away and got halfway down the flight before she paused again. “Or tell her whatever the hell you want.”

“Maggie, what if she doesn’t-” Maggie spun back around as Kara’s voice wavered. “I’m trying to be so positive, and so strong for Eliza. But Maggie, what if she doesn’t-”

_ Make it? _

Choked sobs broke out, and Kara clutched at her chest. Maggie’s resolve shattered as a gasping Kara sank to the floor. She climbed back up the stairs, tugging the blonde to the top step and sitting down with her. She wrapped her arms around her as she wept, tucking her under her chin.

“She can’t die,” Kara whimpered, muffled against Maggie’s black hoodie. “Please, I-I don’t want her to die.” 

Rocking them gently in the empty stairwell, Maggie bit her cheek until the urge to cry again went away.

~

Three and a half weeks later, Maggie gave in and put her heart over her head. 

She got updates from Darla whenever she could. 

Alex made it through the night, she lived, she woke up, responded well to treatment, was discharged early to a private facility- Maggie assumed that she was moved to the DEO for the rest of her recovery- and the world kept turning.

Her head told her that she had nothing more to do except continue her task of rooting out the corrupt cops in the city. Earn their trust by any means necessary and take down the networks they dallied in, that was her objective.

But her heart told her that Alex needed closure after almost losing her life, and maybe Maggie needed a pinch of it too. Certainly, the sex hadn't been closure in the slightest.

She scribbled notes, parts of letters, sentences that came straight from heart to limb to pen, but she always ended up scrunching the paper, or burning it. 

She settled on two words and a single letter;  _ I’m okay, M. _

Looking over her shoulder with every step, Maggie stopped in front of Alex’s apartment. She had no idea if Alex had been discharged home yet. Quickly, she took the note and slipped it under the door-

_ “What the hell?” _

Hearing the bewilderment from inside, Maggie jumped, diving as fast as she could around the corner of the hall.  __

She heard the door opening, the  _ Kara, this is her handwriting! _

She also heard the  _ Alex, that’s great news!  _

Heard how false it sounded.  Alex did too, if the lack of response was a sign of anything.

Maggie peered around the wall, seeing Alex’s stiffened shoulders as she leaned on crutches. Kara spotted her immediately, looking straight at her over Alex’s shoulder. She gripped the pockets of her sweatshirt, waiting for the blonde’s next move, but Kara just turned her attention back to her sister. 

She said something quiet that must have pacified Alex, at least enough to let Kara help her hobble back inside the apartment. 

Waiting for at least thirty seconds after the door shut, Maggie pulled up her hood and stalked off into the night again.

~

All of the groundwork had been laid. Tonight would be her real test of loyalty, of trust. If she passed, she would return to her handler triumphantly. 

If she failed, well, she didn’t want to linger on what the consequences could be. 

Maggie neatened her shirt cuffs, worried at the badge on her hip, kept checking that her gun was loaded. Waiting inside the warehouse, she realised that she was much more comfortable when she had to run around in dark clothing and hide in the shadows. Donning her half-real, half-dark facade and trying to be a corrupt cop went against every instinct of who she was. 

She had grafted to become Detective Sawyer and throwing it all away on these deeds felt almost too authentic. 

But it was the long game that she needed to concentrate on.

A black van trundled along the dirt road leading up to the warehouse. She went over the details one last time. She was there to lift a delivery of Supernova in exchange for helping evidence disappear. Two officers in her precinct had been seen harassing a woman outside a liquor store, and in the morning her body was found below an overpass a block away. 

She had been perturbed at holding drugs as currency when she started Operation Turncoat, but soon found that it worked miracles for infiltrating the corruption networks that poisoned the city.   

_ Game face _ .

She stayed seated on the hood of her vehicle, waiting for them to come to her. Two men jumped out, one in a green jacket and the other wearing a trenchcoat. 

“You’re late,” she said. 

“Traffic on the other side of the bridge was a nightmare,” the one in the green jacket replied. 

She pushed off the hood of her cruiser, sauntering over to them as they slid open the door of the van. There were a dozen bricks of white powder. She made a noise of interest. 

“Peterson and Hudson are gonna get off, right?”

The two officers who may or may not have been involved in the victim’s death were embroiled in the drugs trade, well connected to the two men she was dealing with here now. They provided a vital protection to drug runners, able to inform them ahead of time about 911 calls or possible busts.

“Labs should be back tomorrow, but I’ll make sure the reports disappear.” She nodded to the white packages. “Got a researcher who is easily bribed with the good stuff.”

She flicked out her penknife, ready to make a thin slit on the top, but the man in the coat stopped her. “One of them is open already.”

_ Play the game. _ “You sampling the stuff?” She twirled the penknife. “You think your boss is gonna appreciate that?”

He handed the heavy white brick to her, and she cradled it, weighing it in her hand. She brought it up to take a sniff. It smelled of chemicals from the treatment process, but also mint, which meant it was pure. She hummed, satisfied. 

“Let’s get this into-”

An engine roared as another van gunned up the road towards them. She set the package down, dropping the knife and drawing her weapon. 

“Did you two invite some friends?” she snarled.

“No, that’s Guardian’s van,” the one in the green jacket shot back. “Think he tailed us here?”

“Shit,” Maggie swore, trying to think fast. She ducked behind her cruiser, spotting the hanging crates and containers on shelves above the entrance and recalled her high scores on her last marksmanship test. She needed to be able to count on that skill and timing. 

The van skidded to a stop outside, and Guardian jumped out. He took fire from the two men against his shield. 

Maggie carefully aimed, and shot at one of the shelves until it snapped, crashing a heavy crate down on top of him. 

_ Sorry, James. _

Guardian was on the ground, knocked out by the force of the blow. The guy with the green jacket reached into the van and pulled out a rifle, which he began to load with crimson pellets. “See how you like armour piercing bullets, buddy.”

Maggie’s mind raced. She couldn’t let James be killed, but how far could she really sway this situation before these men got suspicious of her motivations?

“You don’t wanna kill Guardian” she objected, standing up from her spot behind her squad car.

Green jacket raised his rifle. “Why not? One less of them.”

“I heard he has ties with government forces.”

_ Shit where are you going with this Sawyer- _

But it made him pause, and she took a more solid approach. 

“I really don’t want the DEO to come sniffing around with their fancy equipment. I certainly don’t want them to turn up at my place of work one day asking why they can trace me back to tonight.” She leered forward. “So put the toy away.”

“Since when do the cops tell us what to do?” questioned the other man.

She pivoted to face him. “Put the toy away, or I’ll tell your boss that you took a nosedive into his Supernova. Can’t imagine this is the first time you two have been at it...”

The two men exchanged glances, but grunted in acquiescence. They helped her load the Supernova packages into the trunk of her squad car, all the while keeping one eye on James. 

She picked up her penknife as they finished promptly, clicking it closed. “Pleasure doing business.”

When she drove away, she watched Guardian stir in the rearview mirror, Winn jogging over to help him. She hoped that he hadn’t recognised her before he was knocked unconscious. 

Veered away from National City, she tore off into the desert, counting up the miles before finally pulling over. She rested her head against the steering wheel, trembling so much that it was like her skeleton was about to rip through her skin. 

“Tanya Kerr,” she said aloud. The victim of those two cops. “When this is all out in the open, you will get justice, I swear.”

She yanked her badge off of her belt, and threw it into the backseat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's just time jumps about Maggie healing after this, but here we are. Hope you enjoyed x


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie begins to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was never meant to be an undercover story, but a Maggie healing and moving on(?) story. A lot of this is gonna make more sense when you read Alex's half of it. In the meantime just know there are lots of little clues and links in here to keep in mind for later.

Turncoat lasted for fifteen months.

In that time, Maggie hoarded every report that she ‘buried’, every piece of evidence that she supposed to make disappear. Her FBI handlers were irked at her insistence upon maintaining a promise to seek justice after the operation. As a result, she got more than one lecture about concentrating on the task at hand.

She only liaised with one of the other three detectives, McGuigan, who was also keeping a lot of what he was supposed to make disappear. _For the after_ , he disclosed.

When Maggie stepped back into the light, she had no idea it would be so glorious.

The press conference and debriefings were a cyclone, sweeping everything up around them. Driving her through it all was the need to make amends. She had acquired a body count; 17 innocent people who were killed in crossfires or by overzealous cops that she helped protect during Turncoat.

When she and McGuigan met together with the DA and their FBI handlers to discuss what could be introduced into the court from all of the evidence they had kept undercover, she brought up the list of names, asking if they would get the justice they deserved.

ADA Donaghy sat back, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “I don’t think I’ve had to do this much grunt work since law school.” She rolled up her sleeves. “Let’s see what we can do, detectives.”

Once she had the green light from both the DA’s office and the murder squad, she and McGuigan went in search of their own absolution. It brought her to a red door in the suburbs. She centred herself, remembering all those months ago, and knocked.

The door creaked open, revealing an older man with a bushy white moustache. She smiled. “Sorry to bother you, Mr Kerr, I’m-”

“I saw you on the news!” he cheered, equally bushy eyebrows shooting up. He twisted to yell up the stairs. “Betty?! It’s one of them cops from the news!”

Maggie winced. “Mr Kerr-”

He grabbed her by the hand and yanked her into the house. “Please, come in, make yourself at home. And call me Brian.”

The house was cosy, but she couldn’t help noticing all of the duck-related memorabilia and yellow finishes as she was led through to the kitchen. The radio was set to National City’s _Downtime_ station, playing old classics all day every day.

“I’m just going to fix some tea,” Brian said, and then whistled along to the radio station as Betty breezed in.

“Detective Sawyer, it’s lovely to meet you,” she said, shaking Maggie’s hand. “Please, sit.”

Maggie sat at the table covered with a cream and yellow checkered cloth. Some of the cream squares had ducks and ducklings sown into the fabric. Betty took a seat beside her.

“Is this about Tanya’s case?” she asked.

“It is,” Maggie said.

“When that homicide detective called about new evidence, we couldn’t believe it.” She craned her neck to look at her husband. “Could we, Brian?”

“No,” he agreed. “We had sort of accepted we would never know what happened.”

Maggie politely turned down the offer of tea and cake, deeming it inappropriate for what she was here to say. “There’s something I need to tell you about Tanya, and about what happened during Turncoat.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her, covering a patchwork duckling. “A lot of it’s classified but there is something you need to know.”

They looked at her with interest, and a touch of heartbreak, and Maggie cursed herself inwardly.

“During the operation, I stifled the lab reports and video evidence that could have put those officers away sooner. I withheld the information because I couldn’t jeopardise my cover,” Maggie confessed. There it was, out in the open at last. “I’m so sorry that the case went cold for months, and I’m sorry I helped cover the circumstances of Tanya’s death up.”

The badge dug into her hipbone and she shifted in the chair, remembering the thump of it against the backseat that night in the desert. “I’m not here for forgiveness, but I thought you both deserved to know.”

The clock on the wall ticked, the radio still garbling in the background as the couple exchanged a glance.

“That’s alright, Detective Sawyer,” Brian said eventually, raising some of the cake he’d plated.

She didn’t see comprehension in their body language, just that same gratitude. “I’m sorry, I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say-”

Betty reached over to cover her hands on the table, rubbing her thumb back and forth. It was such a motherly gesture, and Maggie wasn’t sure she warranted the affection. “We understand, Detective Sawyer. You were stuck between a rock and a hard place. But you came through, in the end.”

Brian nodded, putting down his plate, cake forgotten. “We didn’t think we’d ever find out what happened to our girl. I’m just glad you were sitting on that evidence, and didn’t just destroy it like you were supposed to.”

Betty nodded past her shoulder, and when Maggie turned she saw a framed photograph of Tanya, two men she assumed were brothers, and her parents sitting on the windowsill. “She’s at rest now, Detective Sawyer. You helped that. You got her justice.”

Maggie turned back to face the pair. They were gracious in their grief. She dipped her head. “I had a meeting with the ADA yesterday about the case. Those men are going away for a long time.”

Betty squeezed her hands. “Will you be at the trial?”

“I’m testifying,” Maggie confirmed.

“Thank you,” Brian whispered, tears welling up.

_16, now._

~

Their taskforce was hailed as heroes, and while some of the activities she had to do undercover didn’t make her feel the same way, Maggie basked in the knowledge that life had tipped positive again. That she could return to her job, to her world, to her life.

CatCo wanted interviews with the four detectives who had ducked below the radar, and one morning a certain junior reporter knocked on the door of the conference room she waited in.

“Good morning, Maggie,” Kara said, giving a small wave. “How are you?”

“Good.” She wasn’t sure whether to get up and shake Kara’s hand or not. In the end, she didn’t. “Weird getting adjusted to regular police work again.”

The interview was much more pleasant than she imagined. Soon enough, formality melted away into a comfortable conversation, though it strayed away from anything personal. It was easy for both of them to pretend they didn’t remember the circumstances of their last conversation.

At the end, Kara started to pack away her things and Maggie could tell she was building to something.

“You know,” she said. “What you did was pretty brave. Or stupid. I’m not sure yet.” She stuffed her dictaphone back into its case. “I remember Alex not sleeping because she thought you were missing, and I kinda wanna throw you out of the window.”

She tugged at the zipper of her handbag, and then lingered. “But what you achieved was worth it, if my opinion counts.”

Maggie stood and pushed her chair underneath the desk. “The line between bravery and stupidity is whether you survive the situation or not. Which I did.”

Kara frowned, looking up at her over her glasses. “Why couldn’t you have said that when I had my recorder on?”

They shared a smile, and then it relapsed into a fidgeting kind of quiet. Kara’s hands flitted about as she said, “I’m sorry for being such a mess at the hospital. You didn’t have to sit with me, since now I know how risky the situation was, but I’m grateful that you did.”

“Hey, Kara, don’t worry about it.” Maggie hadn’t expected her to lunge straight for the elephant in the room, and she searched for the right words. “It was weird timing all round. Alex and I ended, then I disappeared in this high stakes operation, and then Alex was almost killed.”

Both of them tensed at the reminder, but Maggie pressed on. “For the record, I’m sorry too, for being so cold. Most of the time undercover I had no idea where my head was, or who I was supposed to trust. The crash was out of the blue.”

Kara pulled her shoulder bag up. “I could hear your heart beating so hard, that night.”

Maggie nodded, playing with the cuff of her shirt. “I was worried, too.”

She didn’t need to elaborate. They had both been there, had both heard what the prognosis was. When she was back in her safe house, she prayed to whatever deity was listening that Alex would pull through, and if she died, that she would be surrounded by those that loved her, that she could slip away painlessly, as simple as an exhale.

“I want you to know again, I-I mean if it’s worth anything, what you did was incredible. All of us think so,” Kara said.

_All of us think so._

The words reverberated, resonated as she led Kara back through the halls to the entrance of the station. She enjoyed a hot blast of summer in National City as they went outside.

Kara paused. “I’m so proud of you Maggie. We all are.” She fixed her glasses, and added, “Alex, too. She understands, by the way.”

“How is she?” Maggie couldn’t help but ask.

“Good. A lot better than the last time you saw her, obviously,” Kara replied.

Maggie chuckled. “Has she forgiven me, then?”

The reporter smiled, sunny and warm for the first time since she had come for the interview. “As far as she’s concerned, with what we know now, there’s nothing to forgive.”

Impulsively, Maggie hugged her. Kara gave back enthusiastically, gleeful at the gesture. They bid each other goodbye, and then Maggie headed straight up to the rooftop. 

Pressing her palms to the concrete and looking out at the city around her, she savoured a moment of peace and contemplation, listening to traffic below. She hadn’t expected to be cleansed by the words, but a weight had been taken off her shoulders.

Finally, she went back inside, heading for SciDiv. When she got to the bullpen, the detective at the desk beside her raised his head.

“Hey, some FBI chick flashed her badge and left this in for you about an hour ago.”

Maggie frowned at the small folded note on her desk. She picked it up and unfolded it, dropping into her seat at the handwriting.

_“I’m glad you’re okay, A.”_

~

She and McGuigan met once a week following the debriefings. They kept each other up to date on trials, evidence thrown out, frustrations at defence lawyers. She carried those 17 names and faces around with her like spectres. Even in National City where the sun was hot enough to split the stones, she found there were always shadows. McGuigan had his own demons to deal with, but they bridged a gap, understanding what the other was going through. Every week, they tried to purge everything that the FBI debrief didn't cover.  

They had a regular spot; a bench on Marina Boulevard in the shade of japanese zelkovas. They watched the traffic trundling up and down the sloped street for long stretches of quiet between heavy topics. It was strange, but being in public made her feel less exposed than if they had held their conversations in private. 

"You know Sawyer," he said one afternoon, sitting back against the bench. "First time I heard your actual name was at the press conference. Maggie is pretty sweet for a tough ass like you."

"Well, Paul," she said pointedly, looking down at the detective badge she had clasped in her lap. "If you'd asked nicely, I would have given it to you."

He grinned, nodding at her hand. "So, you're back on the force?"

"More or less. I'm just waiting for my final clearance and then coach says I'm back on the team sheet." They chuckled, and Maggie ran her thumb over the grooves of her badge. "And you?"

"Handing in my final notice next week. Not going back."

Maggie looked at him in surprise as he rifled in his pockets for his cigarettes. "You aren't?"

"I can't. I see them every night. Every one of them." He picked the top of the packet open and took a cigarette between his lips, mumbling around it, "Me and Patricia are trying to make things work." He fumbled for a lighter, and when he finally lit the end, took a long inhale. "I just broke up with her and left pretty harshly when Turncoat started, and it's gonna take a lot of work to get her back. But I want to. I, uh..."

Maggie watched him squirm and flick some of the ash onto the ground. They were encroaching on much more personal matters than they usually got to outside of discussing the operation. She knew that he broke off a loving relationship cold turkey, hoping to protect Patricia from becoming collateral if Turncoat was unearthed prematurely. They traded descriptions of their happy place, once, and she knew his was with Patricia at Thanksgiving dinner when he had sat by the fire surrounded by her family, who treated him like he belonged. 

"I have a son," he said, laughing as he gazed up into the zelkovas. "I didn't even know she was pregnant when I broke up with her." 

"Congratulations, dad," Maggie appraised, sinking back against the bench. She tried not to be too jaded against the fact that she was dumped over children, but every so often, the wound that her broken engagement cut into her festered into something uglier. She gripped her badge until the cool metal became warm and sweaty in her palm. 

Walking back to the precinct, Maggie found an overturned nest on the ground. It had fallen out of tall sycamore onto the sidewalk. She frowned and hunkered down, finding a single cheeping chick. It was trying to fly, but it was too broken. 

~

Her first official case back with SciDiv, and the cops were practically licking her boots. One opened the door for her, another handed her a piping hot coffee, and a third rhymed off the details of the scene before she even asked.

It was _Yes, Detective Sawyer_ , and _No, Detective Sawyer_ , and she wondered how long she would ride this wave before it wore off and she had to start buying her own coffee again.

A DEO van wheeled up on a nearby curb, but only two agents dropped out. Alex wasn’t one of them. She circled her scene again and again, but knew she needed to consult them on something niggling at her. She choose the gruesome moment that the coroner checked body temperature to do it.

She expected to get the cold shoulder, but Agent Demos and Agent Vasquez welcomed her fondly, grinning as she approached.

“Detective Sawyer, hero of National City,” Demos said, leaning a shoulder against the van. “To what do we owe the honours?”

“I come in peace,” Maggie joked, holding up her palms. “I just wanted to address something that came up on a few of my last cases before my year long holiday. The whole exchange of evidence thing?”

“All of that is blown over,” Vasquez assured, waving a hand. “Figured it was some of the dodgy cops, right?”

“Hopefully,” Maggie said. “Danvers was pretty riled up about it.”

Vasquez sniggered. “Or maybe she just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

She twisted to see over her shoulder at the medical examiner still hunched over the body, hoping it would hide her smirk as she casually asked, “Speaking of, where is Agent Danvers?” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you play so coy, Detective Sawyer,” ribbed Demos.

Vasquez checked her watch and moved to open the driver’s side of the van. “Probably sitting in the lab with her nose stuck in Kara’s article. I wouldn’t be surprised if she missed the base siren going off when she’s reading that thing.”

Maggie grinned at them, full and cheeky. “I don’t think you’re supposed to tell me that.”

Vasquez shrugged. “Figured you should know.” She got up into the driver’s seat. “Have a good day, Sawyer.”

As she walked back to her cruiser, Maggie considered whether it was time to call Alex up and have that talk that she promised. For some reason, the chick on the pavement clutching at survival came into her mind.

In the end, she didn’t call.

~

A year and a half later, Maggie had options at her feet.

Operation Turncoat proved National City’s cops were as rotten as any department in the country, and unfortunately stripped away more personnel than Maggie would have expected. Over the course of the 18 months since, there were numerous reshuffles within the precinct and beyond. Having had a taste of other work, she found she grew weary of SciDiv.

Other divisions within the NCPD had tried to enlist her, steal her away from the Science Division. Even Larry Craig, the homicide lieutenant, had tempted her in the breakroom one day. He told her to come and _check out_ the bullpen, that she might fancy moving her _Det. Sawyer_ placard to one of their desks. He was keen to garner her high clearance rate for his squad.

She had said that her clearance numbers might not apply to regular homicide cases, and he winked, telling her she wouldn’t know until she tried.

To garner interest that far up the pecking ladder, she had clearly made an impression with the corruption bust.

As she worked on with her own division the offers gnawed at her, bit by bit. She considered taking the sergeant’s exam when the opportunity cropped up, but didn’t feel ready for it.

During that period, she never saw Alex once. She wasn’t sure if something had happened, or if Alex was just avoiding her. She realised, on a day where torrential rain battered at the windows of her apartment, that she had never thought about the lasting consequences of the crash. Was Alex even on active field duty anymore? She longed to call, but almost 3 years seemed too much time to gap with just a phonecall.

She had promised an unconscious Alex that they would talk when Turncoat was over, yet still, they hadn’t.

At last, of all things, it was the offer from narcotics that piqued her interest. While she has prided herself in having a fairer, greyscale moral code than most cops, being undercover gave her a thirst to seek out more of the same organised groups that preyed on the citizens of National City with their illicit substances. Two of the 17 had died after receiving bad batches of Supernova. While the gear had been cut by a third party in the supply chain between Maggie and the victims, she still shouldered the burden of guilt at the deaths.

Her only hesitation stemmed from that fact that SciDiv had been her goal before she made detective. She loved the work, the chase, the community, and had never expected to settle anywhere else.

But maybe it was time for a change after all.

~

She dated here and there, even spending a brief period with a poly couple. It was strange in a nice way, but she wasn’t quite into it. She went back to dating a few aliens.

Then she met Zoe.

She was a metamorpher, able to change her appearance at will. She had shocking blue hair when Maggie bumped into her at the bar, pink hair when they made out in the bathroom, and chestnut brown on Maggie’s pillow the next day. She was bright and bubbly, unlike many of Maggie’s previous amours.

They lasted four months, and when Zoe was offered a promotion in Metropolis, they ended as good friends. Maggie saw her off at the airport with a hug and a real goodbye, and standing in the terminal didn’t make her feel sorrow. She felt renewed.

After three and a half years of emotional hell since she walked out of Alex’s apartment, she began to heal.

The next time the sergeant’s exam was offered to her, she went for it. She became Sergeant Sawyer on a mild autumn day. Standing on the steps of the precinct, clutching her results, a little of that brazen confidence came back. It reminded her of the day that she got her college acceptance letter.

But this wasn’t just an echo from the past; this was fresh.   

“Detective Sawyer, are you alright?”

She looked at Officer Randal, who had joined her out on the steps. She grinned.

“That’s _Sergeant_ Sawyer, to you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maggie's story pretty much angst-free from here on; Alex's is much heavier. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Come chat: @santonaranja


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie contemplates that list of 17 as she waits for her public promotion, and deals with her transfer to Narcotics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty Maggie-centric, but there are sanvers references throughout, and some pretty heavy clues sprinkled all around here about where this is eventually going. Bats back and forth between Maggie’s memories and her present day. Bit dark in places as well lads, so tw// violence?

Tanya Kerr was the first, and Maggie had thought that meant she would be the worst, but she was wrong. No matter how many names were added to her mental list, the realisation that she had let someone down, or failed her calling as a detective, never got better.

The second, Wilma Warrilow, was shot dead by an officer after being mistaken for an armed Stizac aggressor. When Maggie came onto the scene to investigate, she watched as a statement was taken from the cop; he frequently worked in the Science Division with her, yet clearly hadn’t shared her compassionate outlook on the alien community.  

In the end, the case was handled by another precinct. She was asked if she thought that it was a close call. It wasn’t. Wilma had been unarmed, and human, and in the CCTV footage, hadn’t even put up a fight against the cop. If he had relied on his training rather than his weapon when he was startled, Wilma would still be alive.

She told them she would have made the same decision. No reprimands were brought against the officer.

Keith Grant was the third, and the victim that had spooked her the most. He had been an informer for another detective, but had requested to see her instead. He had begged for protection because there were men after him. He told her he knew she was crooked and he would compromise her if she didn’t help him.

Thinking his blackmail was an early test from her handlers, she had outright refused to admit that she was either dirty or undercover, sending him packing. The next morning, his body was fished out of a reservoir ten miles outside of National City.

She still didn’t know if he had just been paranoid about her, or knew more than he let on.

~

Her feet thudded steadily against the treadmill.

Even more than two years after Turncoat, Maggie missed the machine and set of weights provided in her safe house. She could work out in solitude, sweating away an awful day. Back in the ‘real’ world, she pounded at the machine in the precinct’s gym. The facilities were in a windowless room, meaning the air was forever stagnant and musty.

Apart from her, there was only Officer Brannigan. Cops talked, and she heard more than once that he was chomping at the bit to get promoted and get her place in SciDiv when she moved to Narcotics. She wanted to pinch his ear and remind the cocky bastard that he had to scrape through the detective’s exam first.

Then, the door opened, and Officer Lucas came in. Tall, blonde and pretty, she was gaining some experience off the beat with detectives in Vice. From what Maggie had heard, Lucas in stilettos and tight skirts was distracting enough that perps never saw her right hook coming.

She gave both of them a polite smile, lingering on Brannigan. Maggie sniggered, keeping watch on her treadmill display.  

 _4_ and _5_ had been out on a date; Madelyn Robertson and Alfonso Hernandez. They had sat at the table next to Maggie, holding hands and playing footsie.

She clicked up the gradient on the treadmill, wishing she hadn’t left her headphones on her kitchen counter. She was being drawn into that place again, thinking of those 17 lives that could never be brought back, no matter how many she indirectly saved.

A CI had told her that if she went to _The Parliament_ and ordered the _Carassius auratus,_ then the chef would invite her into the back store to price goods that weren’t anything to do with the menu. She had bargained with her CI that if he dummied in as her date, she would buy dinner.

Lifting her water bottle as she adjusted to a quicker jog, Maggie still felt disturbed that a restaurant Alex had taken her to once was a front for alien slave trafficking. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Officer Brannigan was struggling with a larger weight, all in the effort to impress Officer Lucas.

_Idiot._

The scout had went south before her CI even got to the restaurant. One of the servers dashed into the kitchen and started a fuss. Raised voices muffled by the wall filtered into the dining room. At a table on the other side, Maggie had watched five men in neat suits all slowly drawing weapons from their jackets.

She had sensed the impending chaos. The patrons distracted by the commotion through the swing door, Maggie had lifted the hem of her dress and reached for her thigh holster, trying to decide whether to leave or stay and put up an affront.  

The choice had been solidly made for her as the kitchen door banged open. Three of the staff had appeared with semi-automatic weapons.

Breathing hard, Maggie focused on her shoes beneath her on the treadmill. Left, right, over and over. The bright blue laces on the right were coming loose, but she didn’t stop running. The screams of shock from the diners were ringing in her ears.  

In the fray to escape the fire fight, Madelyn and Alfonso had been shot. He was dead before he hit the ground, caught straight in the chest. A bullet had ripped straight through her neck and out the other side.

Maggie had scrambled over, using their table for cover and pressing her neck. She had tried to stop her from spluttering blood. Looking down into the whites of Madelyn’s eyes, how frightened they were, she known they would never leave her.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Maggie had lied.

In the gym, she pounded at the treadmill, craving the protest of her muscles. Her calves and lungs burned as she ran at a pace she never usually set for herself this late on in her run. She thought about how she had cleaned up and went to the morgue, wanting to be present as Madelyn and Alfonso’s families identified their bodies.

“I just don’t understand,” Madelyn’s mother had murmured, touching a pale face.

_I had your daughter’s blood on my hands, Ma’am, and now I have to protect those who shot her, because I’m trying to get them to trust that I’m on their side-_

Maggie flinched at the clang of a weights machine being finished with, losing her stride for a beat or two. She lowered the pace into a jog again, gulping at her water. Sweat stuck her ponytail to the back of her neck. She brought her workout to a close, gasping shallowly, staring down hard at the numbers on the display until they blurred.

She slung her sweatshirt over her shoulders, _covering that scar on her neck_ , and headed for the shower, paying no heed to the concerned looks she got on the way out.

~

Maggie was beginning to regret asking Chief M.E. Dr Sally Morrison for a helpful introduction to all of the new things she would need to know when she started taking Narcotics cases.

She had spent the entire afternoon reading autopsy reports and chemical analysis, trying to come to terms with all of the new information. She had worked drug cases in SciDiv, and during Turncoat, but she had no idea about the complexity of the some substances she was dealing with.

 _If only Alex were here to explain this_.

It wasn’t the first time she had thought about that in 3 years, but the first time in this context. She shook her head, trying not to fall down that particular rabbit hole.

Sometimes, she didn’t know victims' names until she was reading their autopsy reports, as was the case with Petrov Grocki and his fiancee Janusz Cesarz, or as she fretfully thought of them, _6_ and _7_.

Murdered in their home, they had been stabbed to death because they owed money to a loan shark. She had handed it over to the gang unit, misunderstanding why she had been called to the scene, until a perimeter cop slipped her a piece of paper with the word _Fuego_ on it.

She had left, but the note crumpled in her fist was a breakthrough, if she played her cards right. Fuego up until that point had been all rumours. It was an organisation split between gang bosses and NCPD personnel, and it was one of the pinnacles of what Turncoat was trying to uncover.

Kick the tentpoles, bring the tent down.

Sure enough, a certain Jim Craig had been lounging in an alleyway as she went for coffee the next day. Her FBI handlers had his mugshot pinned to the board in the kitchen of the safe house, his features burned into her brain. When she spotted him that morning, her gut instantly pulled her into the alley. He swung a bag with leather gloves and a bloody knife in front of her.  

“Not interested,” she had said, opening with confidence. She wanted him to come to her, otherwise he would sniff out her insincerity right off the bat.

“Not interested?” he returned smugly. “But this could be the quickest close you’ve ever handled. A station record, Detective Sawyer.”

She had shrugged. “Not my case anymore, Jim.”

His eyes had narrowed, the bravado fading. “You know who I am.”

“Course I do. I’ve been giving some of your regulars a little extra candy in exchange for information. They warned me not to, not on your turf.” She had toed the line much more carefully then, knowing this was a key break. “Well, they _warned_ me, but they took the necro anyway.”

His eyebrows had quirked at the street name. “That necro you’ve been receiving, I’m told, is of a higher quality than what I’m getting from my boss.” He stepped closer, indicating the bag. “I propose a trade.”

“My connections for the solving a single case?” She was baiting him, and she had suspected he was well aware of it. They had faced off like chess players, taking in the board and working through dozens of strategies before moving a piece. “I don’t have a supplier. I just get what I can, when I can. It’s not a business venture.”

She bowed her head slightly, placid, _testing_.

“Good to hear. But maybe I have a bigger proposition for you, Detective." Jim played with the top of the bag. "You would be very valuable to us. An asset, if you will.”

 _Testing._ “Like I said, not interested.”

“I’m watching you, Detective Sawyer.” He flung the plastic holder into an open dumpster, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets and walking away. On the back of his neck she had seen it. The prize that her FBI handlers had been pushing her to search out.

The scar; a mark resembling a fire about the size of a fingerprint had been branded into the skin.

She thought about calling the gang squad about the evidence in the dumpster, but took a gamble, and walked away-

“Detective Sawyer?”

Maggie snapped back to the present. The bullpen was dim, the sun having dipped low outside. In her doorway was Marcia, one of the ladies from HR.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Maggie smiled, flattening the autopsy report back on her desk. “Words are starting to blur together.”

“Getting ready for your big move upstairs?” Marcia teased, nodding up to the ceiling.

She smoothed her palms over the paperwork. “Yes.” Smirking up at the woman in the doorway, she added; “And yes, if there’s farewell cake in the SciDiv break room, then you and your HR cronies are invited.”

“Oh, lovely!” Marcia crooned. “But we won’t invite Homicide, will we?”

“No, we won’t.”

“Thank heavens for that,” Marcia said, rushing back down the hall.

~

Fiona was sweet when she kissed her, tasting like the schnapps she had been drinking. Maggie was charmed after a game or two of pool, and the lively Saturday night atmosphere brought the walls of inhibition right down.

The bar was heaving, and Maggie eventually turned to her, impatient with the lack of service. “Wanna get out of here?”

And they ended up in her apartment. Fiona moved her hair away from her neck, leaning in to kiss up to her ear. She paused, holding back, and ran her fingertip over the mark on Maggie’s nape.

“What’s this?”

And Maggie remembered-

-how Silvia Sarkin became number 8 at the most dangerous dip in the operation.

Maggie was lifted in the evening, in the NCPD parking lot. She knew there was a presence, knew as soon as the bag went over her head and she was bundled into a van that she might not make it out. She stayed silent during the rough treatment; she was disarmed, her boots taken off, her hands tied behind her back.

_I’m dead. I’m about to die._

Eventually, the van stopped and the door slid open. She was carried out and forced down to her knees, and the black bag was whipped off her head. Her nostrils flared at the reek of smoke, and saw a molten furnace to her right. From what she could gather, she was in a glass blowing pant.

_They’re going to make an example of me._

On her knees in front of four figures in balaclavas, she had known that was it. Someone had outed her as being involved with Turncoat. They knew she wasn’t legit, that she was faking, and the FBI certainly weren’t going to save her. 

_Will death be a sweet relief? Will it hurt?_

The shortest of the four stepped forward, reaching into his waistband and pulling out a Glock 19- _her_ police issue weapon.

“Any last words?”

She had been terrified, but dignity forced her chin up in defiance, her eyes dry. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of emotion, not at the end.

_Alex, I hope you’re happy._

He idly checked the magazine, and grunted in satisfaction. He reloaded the weapon.

_I hope you have a wonderful family, get everything you wanted._

He lowered the gun, aiming it straight at her. She closed her eyes, wondering how Alex would find out about her death.

_I love you, I love you, I love-_

A bang.

Her whole body jerked, ears ringing, but as she heard a scuffle and thud, she realised she was spared.

She opened her eyes to see that one of the balaclava-clad figures was on the floor. Another reached down and yanked off the cloth covering her face. Gagging, Maggie wished they hadn’t.

“She betrayed us. FBI informer,” a man’s voice growled. He toed at the body and Maggie forced herself not to wretch at the bloody face.

“Which means, we have an opening for a new member.” She recognised Jim Craig’s voice before he even peeled off his balaclava. He stepped forward, and all three men trained their eyes on her. “We’ve been impressed by the way you operate, by your loyalty and your strategy in the force. We want to expand operations into the alien community, specifically gun-running, and we suspect you have the contacts to get us started.”

"You been grooming me?" she snarled. 

"You wouldn't let yourself be groomed, remember?" Jim drawled. "But we've been impressed, nonetheless."

“What do you say?” the third man asked, moving to circle behind her out of sight.

Maggie appraised the two men still in front of her, head swimming. This was her mission. She forced down the rolling nausea inside, relying on the false confidence. She tapped into that facade, who she was meant to be right now, not who she was. 

“If there’s cash involved, I’m in.” She focused on Jim Craig, her bound wrists itching. “But is this necessary? I don't appreciate the hazing.”

He nodded at something behind her. The third man who had gone out of her eyeline gripped her hair and pulled it back from her neck. She winced at the sharp bite of pain.

Jim grinned. “Welcome to Fuego, Detective Sawyer.”

As the hot brand seared into the skin of her neck, she screamed-

“Maggie? Are you okay?”

She blinked, back in her bedroom, realising that crystal blue eyes were staring at her in concern. 

“It’s one of those scar-tattoos. Got it on holiday when I was really fucked up,” she lied with a shrug. “Was just trying to remember why I got it.”

Fiona’s eyes glimmered with arousal and intrigue. “Have you got any other tattoos?”

Forcing herself back into the present, Maggie pressed closer. “Why don’t you find out yourself?”

~

The judge thumped his gravel. Maggie made her way out of the courtroom, thinking about how three very different women who shared the same name could hold such significance in her life.

First, there had been Eliza Wilke; the less she thought about that the better. Then, there was Dr. Eliza Danvers, who had welcomed her into her life and home so wholeheartedly, who had taken her to the side on Alex’s birthday and thanked her for making her daughter so happy.

The triad was completed by Eliza Sharansky. Number _9_.

She had been from money, and was plotting a run for Mayor. It was simple; in her pre-election puff pieces, she vowed to be tough on crime _if_ she ran. She promised to put out corruption in National City’s offices _if_ she ran. She swore to reveal networks and connections that had poisoned the city’s security and integrity for too long, _if_ she ran.

It was simple indeed: Fuego made sure she didn’t run.

The election for Mayor had finished last week, but some of the posters were still tacked around the courthouse. Maggie headed down the stone steps towards the ground floor bathrooms, and wondered if Eliza had survived, would her face be on some of these posters? In all of the papers this week? 

Every time she testified in a case, it somehow reminded Maggie of how Sharansky's case had been much more high profile, and widely reported, because she was a pretty, powerful, rich women. To the public, she was a tragedy, and the rest were unfortunate events.

Eyes down, angered, she ran headlong into a man exiting the mens’.

“Oh my god, I’m so-” She came up short as she recognised the man. “Winn?!”

“Maggie?!” he squeaked, equally aghast. “How- _jeez_ , how are you? How is detective-ing?”

“I’m good, yeah, good.” She felt awkward and overdressed in her court clothes, saying anything that came to mind. “I’m a sergeant, now. Well, as soon as the ceremony happens, anyway.”

He pointed at her. “Nothing’s legit unless it’s in the papers, right?”

She chuckled, scratching at the back of her neck where the mark was. “We should catch up sometime.”

He nodded so vigorously, she thought his skull might come detached. “Sure, absolutely.”

In the midst of the scattered interaction, panic had thrown logic out of the window, and Winn wasn’t exactly the most grounded person at the best of times. She realised that he might try to call on her old cell, which was destroyed as part of her initiation into Turncoat.

It wasn’t until she was washing her hands that she realised she hadn’t even asked what he was doing in the courthouse.

~

Nicole Anderson and Katherine Kerrigan- _10 and 11-_ were two friends who died dosing on Supernova cut with dust from Martian mines, which was extremely toxic to humans in concentrated measures. When the beat cops caught the dealer, she had been alarmed to find it was she who had sold the Supernova to him for information only the week previous.

Blindly panicking, she had helped him wriggle out of the arrest, because he couldn’t be charged with possession of a substance that he didn’t have anymore, stiff bodies or not. And since there was no actually concrete evidence to prove he was the dealer who fixed them up, he walked out scot-free.

Maggie lay on her couch on her day off, watching reruns of a medical drama. A woman’s heart was dying due to her chronic cocaine use. Seeing those two young lives cut short, being part of the dirty chain that never checked the purity of the drug it was passing along, it weighed on her conscious when she watched things like this.

Her phone began to buzz and she grabbed it from the coffee table.

“Sawyer.”

_“Did you see the picture I just sent you of my Tinder date for tonight?”_

“Hello, Zoe,” Maggie said, amused.

_“Hey. So?”_

“Hold on.” She pulled the phone away and looked at the unopened message. She tilted her head, and put the phone back to her ear. “He’s okay.”

_"You don’t think he’s hot?”_

“I’m gay.”

_“And I once turned into a parrot just so you would pay more attention to me. It worked."_

Maggie remembered the tweeting and whistling sounds coming from her kitchen. When she finally got up to investigate, she found a rainbow lorikeet swinging from the light fixture. “I was finding red and yellow feathers in the couch for weeks.”

_“It worked though. We had sex every time we watched nature documentaries after that. It was like you were triggered.”_

She covered her eyes with her free hand. “It’s just a coincidence that there were so many reruns of _Planet Earth_. Don’t make it weird, Zoe.”

Her friend chuckled darkly down the phone. Maggie knew she enjoyed the wind up.

_“So, how are you? How is narcotics? Learn all the new lingo?”_

“It’s only been a week. I’m just playing catch up. The work is pretty challenging so it keeps me engaged,” she said. “Detective to sergeant isn’t the most exciting promotion, either. I think I just did it to prove a point.”

_“Proving a point or not, well done, Maggie! Would you wanna go further?”_

She crossed her ankles, turning down the TV’s volume with the remote. “I don’t know. I’d never have gunned for promotions in the past. Two, three years ago and the thought of more desk work would have made me puke, but now…”

_“Now you’re thinking about it?”_

She couldn’t help it, fancying her chances more now than in the past. A cop like her clawing her way up to brass? If nothing else, the thought tickled her. Maybe she could see herself commanding a squad in the future, perhaps as a lieutenant...

“Maybe. Sergeant is where I’m at for now.” She puffed out a breath, and then groaned as she remembered what she was planning to text Zoe that night anyway. “They’re rolling it out at one of those ceremony things. Big public event. Photos, smiles, bad champagne.”

There was a pause of silence. She picked lint off her sweatpants. “Zoe?”

_“Will you be in uniform?”_

"Yes..." She heard a long sigh in response.

_"Men and women in uniform? My bisexual wet dream..."_

~

Underneath the zelkovas, watching the sluggish traffic, she thought about Van Armstrong, _12._

6 years old, cycling out around his house after school. His mother had taken an eye off of him for less than a minute before he strayed out onto the road and was hit by a car. It was stolen, driven off by one of Maggie’s new associates. With a heavy heart, she had held the information tight to her chest as a family grieved their boy with no explanation or closure of the hit and run.  

Understandably, Mrs Armstrong was not as forgiving as others had been when Maggie visited her. She almost bottled it, driving around the block three times before visiting the still grieving parents when Turncoat was over. She was thrown out in fury when she delivered the confession, and drew hard, stoic looks when she gave her testimony in court about the incident.

Maggie sighed, digging her fingertip into a loose flake of paint from the bench. She peeled the black strip away, finding the chipped white coat underneath. She heard a whistle and looked up.

McGuigan strolled towards her, a boy perched on his shoulders. When he reached the bench, he helped the boy onto his lap as he sat down.

“Dan, say hello to Maggie,” he said, prompting the boy to smile and wave shyly.

“Hello, little man,” she greeted. He wasn’t much older than a year, with a mop of curly brown hair. “Are you out for a walk with daddy?” He nodded, beaming. She smiled broadly. “This one is a little cutie.”

As soon as she said it, her throat and nose twitched, and she quickly turned away to catch a sneeze in her elbow.

“You okay?” McGuigan asked.

“Think I’m just coming down with something today,” she grumbled, already feeling her eyes water.

“Ha! Try having one of these things,” he joked, bouncing his son on his knee. “They’re germ machines.”

That night, nursing a touch of flu, she went to sleep thinking about Patricia, Paul and Dan. And she dreamed. She was back with Alex in the apartment, and for some reason, they were laughing about turkey basters. She kissed and nuzzled below Alex’s belly button until she was pushed away with a laugh.

Waking in the middle of the night with throbbing temples, she wondered what the hell her subconscious was playing at.

That would never have been her.

~

The contrast between _13_ and _14_ couldn’t have been more black and white.

The only unnamed victim had their teeth removed before burning alive. Maggie referred to them as _Unnamed 13,_ rather than Jane Doe. She had overheard Jim Craig claiming the murder as his own doing, firebombing the car himself. She hadn’t asked for the name, nor the motive and had done nothing in retaliation.

 _14_ , however, got under her skin in a way none of the others did.  

Marcus Cairney was caught trying to get his hands on kryptonite. When they got him into interrogation, they scratched their heads at the lack of a paper trail of his existence, coming to the conclusion that it was a false identity.

As soon as Maggie entered Interrogation Room A, he sneered, “I know who you are.”

“I’m sure you do,” she had replied flippantly, sitting down with a tablet in front of her.

“I know you still love her.”

And just like that, he had commanded her full attention.

There was no paper trail because he was an ex-Cadmus agent, trying to make his own break against alien life in National City, but she learned that much later. He refused to answer many of her questions, continuing to taunt her about her past with Alex and her connection to Supergirl. During a break, she had discreetly called Agent Holloway, who said that she shouldn’t rise to any threats. The call left her feeling powerless and disillusioned.  

When he was freed on bail that evening, she had glared at him, and then stormed into the break room to get some water.

“If I could go vigilante…” she had growled, not realising who could have overheard.

In the morning, Cairney’s body was found strangled under the same underpass where Tanya Kerr’s body was found. She was stunned at the news, until she rounded a corner in the precinct to find Officer Peterson and Officer Hudson on either side of a vending machine.

She locked eyes with Hudson, silent questions sparking between them. Then Peterson, who held a blank expression.

“Heard he threatened you. Threatened someone you love,” Hudson said. He chewed gum slowly, like a cow with cud. “You scratched our back, Sawyer.”

“We don’t forget who takes risks for us.” Peterson nodded, tipping his hat. “Good day, Detective.”

~

 _15 & 16 _, the two James’.

She was signing off something in the NCPD compound when she had heard an argument erupt under a bonnet. A familiar voice had drawn her over, and she found Charlie-T arguing it out with one of the other station mechanics.

“Detective Sawyer,” Charlie-T had greeted, his eyes piercing. He had worn a black skull bandana around his neck, hiding the fire-shaped brand.

“What’s the issue?” she asked, noting, “This is a civilian car.”

“It’s a unmarked,” the mechanic corrected. “But the brakes need fixed before it leaves this-”

“I keep telling him the brakes are fine,” Charlie-T said coolly.

“They clearly-”

“Let me have a look,” Maggie said. The mechanic scoffed, and she rolled her eyes. “My uncle fixed cars.”

While Charlie-T was NCPD personnel, he was also one of her _brothers_ in Fuego. Whether his vehemence about the car was for a reason or whether she had to save him from humiliation, she knew she had to step in and make an impression.

The mark was small and low enough on the nape of her neck that it was either covered by her shirt or her hair. In a clear power move, she had pulled her hair up into a tight ponytail and used the bobble around her wrist to tie it. The mechanic had stiffened beside her, seeing the mark on her neck as she peered at the brakes. She saw the fault immediately, but shook her head.

“Nope, nothing wrong here.” She stood up slowly, quirking her head. “Maybe check it all again?”

The mechanic had kept his eyes on her shoes. Charlie-T had smirked, nodding. Between them, the mechanic was left shaken.

Later, she had heard that the car crashed, killing two men inside. The car brakes had failed, rolling out of control down one of the steep roads in National City, careening into a thick oak outside a school yard at the bottom.

Maggie hadn’t said a thing as she handed over Charlie-T’s pay packet to the mechanic who knew it was jimmied on purpose.

~

There was a garage just outside of National City’s limits that let drivers clean and maintain their own vehicle so long as they paid for the products they used, as well as a small entrance charge.

After getting a few checks done by one of the mechanics, Maggie paid for the service and wheeled her bike out into the lot. She turned on a hose, enjoying the breeze as she carefully sprayed down her bike with cool water.

In the past, she and Alex would go out to see the stars in the desert, away from all the light pollution. They used to joke about which bike they would take unless they both rode together-

_“My Ducati is perfectly fine.”_

_“Your Ducati is a riceburner, Danvers.”_

_Ironic now_ , Maggie sighed, circling around to the other side of the Triumph. She wasn’t sure if Alex even had a bike anymore.

They had kept a rule; no matter how much they fantasised about making love under the stars, it was not worth the scratchy, sandy journey home. No sex in the desert, that was the law.

It was always a game, which bike they ended up taking, and who ended up behind who, so to speak. Kara once told her that it was Alex who taught her to ride, and joked that her sister never rode _bitch_ for anyone. Alex had gotten embarrassed, flashing her a shy look behind Kara’s back.

Because Alex Danvers rode _bitch_ for _her_.

The one time Maggie never put up a fight was a week after the Daxamite invasion, because J’onn had interrupted them on the balcony after the impromptu proposal, calling Alex away from their moment. Closed off, they hadn’t had a chance to bring it up again for days. So when Alex suggested a drive, Maggie had settled behind her without argument, pulling on her helmet.

Maggie scrubbed at her headlight now, remembering leaning in to the bends and corners, the jittering of anticipation in Alex’s frame. How the urban landscape had peeled away as they skirted out into the desert.

Laying down a blanket, they had reclined in the sand, anticipation nipping in the air.

“You know, uh…” Alex had swallowed, looking at her. “You never really gave me an answer, last week.”

Maggie hadn’t taken her eyes off of the stars, Alex’s gaze burning into her profile. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“You’ve been thinking about it,” Alex had echoed, guarded. She had looked away like she was getting ready to be shot down.

“I’ve been thinking-” Maggie’s words hadn’t been sturdy enough to withstand the onslaught of excitement as her voice cracked, and she paused, hands clawing at the blanket beneath them. “About whether you’ve really thought this through, or whether you did it because it was just after we thought we could all die via Daxamite invasion.”

“I proposed because I love you, Maggie. And I don’t wanna waste anymore time.” Maggie thought blood would bead with how hard Alex had bitten her lip as she finally looked over, and then; “Besides, I’ve almost died a dozen times since we’ve been together. Nothing special about this one, except that I want you to be my wife.”

“Danvers,” she had sighed, reaching over to lace her fingers through Alex’s. Maggie had never known her to quiver with such bone-shaking anxiety before or since. “Marriages end in heartbreak. They crash and burn.”

“You said our relationship would too, remember? Fresh off the boat? But we gave it a chance.” She had squeezed Maggie’s hand. “I mean, if you don’t wanna-”

“Yeah,” Maggie had interrupted.

“Yes?” Alex had breathed.

“Yes.”

Alex had started, bolting up off of the sandy blanket to the Ducati, rummaging in the saddle bag. “Thank _God_. Thank God because-” Pulling out her prize, she had made her way back to the blanket. “Because I’ve already got this.”

Carefully, she unwrapped a handful of crimson tissue to reveal a square, navy box. Maggie had stared at it, sitting in the palm of her hand. Alex had eased into a crouch, reaching for Maggie’s finger, but she was swatted away.

“Do it properly this time.”

In the lot, Maggie stalled, her cloth mid-scrub. She closed her eyes, vividly recalling the comprehension dawning on Alex’s face just before she sank to one knee.

“Maggie Sawyer, will you marry me?”

They had broken their rule about desert sex, that night.

“4 years ago,” she mumbled, rinsing out the cloth and recommitting to her task.

Time was a tricky thing, perception was another. Especially with her time during Turncoat, Maggie found it difficult to ascertain what happened in what order, because things that happened long ago still resonated with her in the present, while recent events were a distant irrelevance.

She had learned that no matter how cynical the world had sculpted her to be, she still fell into the trap of getting her hopes up.

Seeing the finish line on the horizon, she had believed that the list of 16 would grow no longer. Yet barely days before Turncoat came to a head, one last death occurred: Gibson Turner became _17_ when he was shot by Charlie-T.

Maggie had taken his gun in a ziploc bag as they leaned against the hood of her cruiser. She had played with the red clipped line, popping it open and closed with her thumbs as waves of disappointment dampened her previous elation. She discovered, watching Charlie-T snake his fingers into his jacket for a cigarette, that part of that naive 14 year old that _wished_ was still alive inside her.

“You ever been in love, Sawyer?”

She had popped it closed one last time, and fished a lighter from her windbreaker. “Nah, I don’t have time for that kinda thing.”

He hummed, craning his head over, mumbling, “Heard from Robbie you were engaged to a fed, once.”

Maggie had lit his cigarette, keeping her cool even when he mentioned Alex. Officer Robert Carmichael was something of a lapdog for Charlie-T, and nothing if not a gossiper of a cop.

“Her mom had a nice house. Figure we were getting it when she dropped, which could have been any time. Chain smoker with a rattling chest.”

Fake, but exactly the kind of dark humour that a sociopath like Charlie-T had appreciated. As he grinned around his smoky cigarette, his gold teeth had glinted.

Standing up from her bike and wiping her brow, she threw the cloth into the bucket where it sloshed dirty water over the edges. She kicked half-heartedly at Triumph’s tires, frowning at the lack of bounce.

Too deflated.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured this was an important chapter to show why Maggie's mind is changing on...certain things. Like I said, lots of clues about the last two chapters in here. Let me know what you thought! :) All mistakes are my own.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes, Maggie works, and then the universe twists her onto an unexpected path, career-wise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming closer to the end. I hope you're ready for a proper jammy ending, everyone. :)

Though she had already begun working in the position of sergeant, she was told in no uncertain terms by her new lieutenant that she wouldn’t be able to worm her way out of a public decoration. Despite her discontentment, her name was added to the rooster for the nearest promotion ceremony. 

The night before the big day, Maggie answered a scratch at her door to a sleek black cat, its tail twitching. She looked down, bemused.

“Who owns you, hmm?” The cat meowed, and then slinked straight through her legs into the apartment. “Hey, woah, you can’t just-”

Maggie lunged for her firearm as the cat began to grow and change shape. She drew it from the holster on the table, and then heard laughter. Zoe stood with her arms crossed. 

She dropped the gun back to the table as the visitor approached. “Oh my god, it’s you.”

“Course it’s me, dumbass,” Zoe murmured, pressing Maggie against the wall and kissing her, giving her a real hello.

In the morning, Maggie cracked open an eye to see ruby red hair.

“Jesus,  _ red _ ?” she mumbled, scrubbing over her face. “Also, morning.”

Zoe smirked down at her. “Can you believe we did that last night?”

Maggie chuckled, dropping her hands to the bedsheets. “Why? We’re both single. No reason we can’t have some fun while you’re here.” Out of habit, she scraped at the mark on the back of her neck. “Which, by the way, why are you here? Not that it isn’t a nice surprise...”

Still smirking, Zoe shook her head. “You’re something else, Maggie.”

“Hey,  _ you _ turned up at  _ my _ apartment.”

“My Uber got lost on the way to my hotel,” Zoe deadpanned, sliding a hand up Maggie’s stomach.

Later, Zoe showered while Maggie brushed her teeth, explaining over the spray that once she heard about the promotion ceremony, she thought that she would be a terrible friend if she didn’t turn up. She made breakfast while Maggie tied up her hair and smeared a generous amount of concealer over the mark on her neck. It didn’t hide it completely, but she felt better anyway.

Once she was in her dress uniform, bar her hat and boots, she held her own gaze in the mirror, trying to recall the last time that she had worn this.

_ A function honouring the four of us after Turncoat. _

And before that…

_ It spent the night on Alex’s floor after- _

Zoe popped her head around the door, melting at the sight. She prowled over, fixing Maggie’s cap onto her head and smoothing down her badges with a purr.

“Why don’t you wear your uniform more often? You look so good.”

“Because I’m a plain-clothed detective-” She batted Zoe’s hands away from toying with the buttons. “-and also because clearly you would end up ripping it off anyway.”

The ceremony itself had her sweating inside her white gloves. She hated public events like this, and was glad that the focus wouldn’t entirely be on her, since there were plenty of others being promoted or awarded. 

Still, she dipped her head when the Major reached her name, hoping the peak of her cap would hide the reddening cheeks.

Damn, if  _ Sergeant Maggie Sawyer _ didn’t make her bloom.  

As she saluted, Maggie thought she spotted two familiar faces in the crowd, but pinned it down as wishful thinking. Afterwards, however, when the lines broke rank and people were free to mix with the spectators, she caught the pair red-handed. They were stealing finger sandwiches from the buffet when she tapped them both on the shoulder, and they froze.

“Hello, Maggie,” Winn said sheepishly.

“You guys think you can come down here and scrounge lunch off our NCPD budget?”

James chuckled. “Only if Sergeant Sawyer thinks she’s too good now to give us a hug.”

She grinned, putting her cap under one arm and hugging them both fiercely with the other. 

“Are they any good?” she asked lowly, squinting at the food behind them. “The catering isn’t exactly known for being great at these things.”

Aware of conversation collectively dropping to a murmur behind her, Maggie turned to see a familiar blue and red suited figure floating down to the ground.

Supergirl smiled at her, eyes shining. “Good work, Sergeant Sawyer. Thank you for your service, and for helping keep the citizens of National City safe.”

Maggie tipped her chin. “That means a lot, Supergirl.” 

“It doesn’t matter if the catering is good or bad,” Winn whispered. “Don’t let her near it.” 

~

It took less time than Maggie would have wagered to patch things up with the two men. 

Winn hopped from foot to foot and told her that after running into her at the courthouse, he wanted to make an actual effort for that catch up, yet when he tried her cell, her number was disconnected. He didn’t want to hack or hunt for her details, because even he found it too intrusive. This was his next best option. 

She invited them to join the celebration drinks, where she heard that Winn had been dating a lawyer when she ran into him at the courthouse. (She did notice that when she asked how they met, both he and James shared a strange look. She swiftly changed the subject.) 

They poked fun at the shiny rookies, filled each other in on the missing time, and eventually apologised for not keeping in touch. 

“We should do this more often,” Winn chimed, losing confidence as the rest of the table stared at him. “I mean, if you want.”

Maggie grinned, putting her peaked cap on his head. “Only if you buy the next round.”

He perked up, hat slipping back. “I can do that.”

He dashed to the bar, and Zoe excused herself to go to the bathroom. Maggie accepted another round of congratulations and offers of drinks from some colleagues passing through. When she turned her attention back to James, he had a pensive look on his face. 

“So, the drugs squad, huh?” He lifted the corner of a beer mat, letting it flop back down before tipping it up again. “That’s got to be tough at times. What made you switch?”

“Well, I got sick of Alex standing me up for our case dates,” she said, playing it off easily as she took a swig of her drink. “Then again, I did stand her up for a while too…”

He grinned in that broad way he often did. “What was it like, being undercover?” he asked.

“As myself? Terrifying,” Maggie confided. “There were plenty of things that happened under Turncoat that I’d rather just forget about. It was pretty unsavoury.”

“Ever save Guardian’s life, by any chance?” he teased. 

She paused, the bottle resting against her lip. “Figured that was where you were going with this.”

James let the beer mat fall for the last time. “Winn sat in the van, terrified when he recognised the armour-piercing rifle. We couldn’t see you in the playbacks, just the guy hesitating. Then when all that stuff about Turncoat came out, we kinda put two and two together.” He lifted his beer. “Thank you.”

The crash of crates echoing in the warehouse had been deafening that night. She raised her own drink and they clinked them together in a toast. “You’re welcome.”

On her turn to order, Maggie rested her elbows on the bar and tried to process the day. Zoe popped up at her side while she waited on the bartender to pour the drinks, her hair an emerald green. 

“He’s handsome,” she said plainly. All day, she had had eyes for James.

Maggie paid for the drinks, nodding at her to carry some of them. “Find out if he’s single.”

Zoe lingered at the bar, and Maggie turned back. “It’s not weird, is it? I mean, hooking up with you last night and then...”

Maggie quirked her head. The metamorpher was someone she considered a best friend, and while they had fun, all serious romantic notions had faded away into their friendship. She hadn’t expected this kind of insecurity to rear its head. 

They had offhandedly discussed the problem of internalised homophobia and biphobia in the past, and while Maggie had always stressed that she was comfortable with Zoe’s sexuality however it expressed itself, it seemed to Maggie that some deep-seated fear remained.

“Hey,” she said softly, putting the drinks back on the bar and bringing her hands up to Zoe’s shoulders. The metamorpher’s hair evolved into streaks of blue, growing long down her shoulders. It often changed rapidly from one extreme to the other when Zoe went through heightened emotions, negative or positive. 

“You’re a good friend, but you aren’t my girlfriend,” Maggie said carefully. “You’re a funky metamorpher who is here on a semi-holiday. Let loose. Live a little.”

Zoe chewed her lower lip, and then perked up. “Thanks, Sarge.”

“Okay, no.”

They shared a cheeky grin, and then as Maggie reached for drinks again, Zoe stopped her. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

Her hair transformed, shortening into a sharp bob, before deepening into a reddish-brown.  _ Alex’s style of- _

Zoe winked and grabbed a pint in each hand, leaving Maggie gaping at the bar. 

~

Later, as the booze flowed more freely and tongues loosened, Winn became much more inebriated than the rest of them. Since Zoe and James looked eager to leave together, Maggie waved them off with a promise to get Winn home safely.

She got him into a cab and the whole way to his address with a discombobulated discussion about the whether police procedurals were improving in accuracy, or worsening. Maggie’s cap wobbled on his head as he wagged a finger and fervently made each point.

Staggering out of the elevator on his floor, he finally broke it to her: “Alex came today, too.” 

Maggie stopped walking and Winn stumbled a few steps ahead. He wheeled around, slapping his hands over his mouth, and then muttering. “I shouldn’t have said that. I  _ shouldn’t _ . Alex is gonna murder me. Oh God, she’s gonna-”

“Give me your front door key,” she said, side-stepping the issue.

He face planted the couch almost as soon as he shuffled inside, leaving her with the task of getting his shoes off and covering him with a blanket. She picked up her cap and rested it on the back of her head. On his coffee table sat a thick photo album.

“Me ‘n’ James were reminiscing. He took loads of ‘em. I keep ‘em all. I don’t care about…” He scrubbed his face as his words began to meld together. “Don’t care about...y’know what I mean?”

Maggie frowned and then carefully opened the front, finding an untidy stack of pictures that were loose, not yet put into the plastic screens of the album. She carefully spread them out, recognising her own face amongst various combinations of Winn, Alex, Kara, J’onn and James. At the DEO, at Alex’s apartment, at Kara’s. 

“Never had friends as a kid,” he muttered sadly. “Never had any of them…” He pointed to the album, and then let his hand drop over the side of the couch.

She picked up a picture of J’onn and Kara, noticing two figures captured together under the mistletoe in the background. Their one and only Christmas party together at Kara’s apartment. She and Alex hadn’t even been physically intimate, at that point, and yet the camera caught them standing close. She studied how the image of herself gazed up at the sprig of mistletoe, debating tradition, while Alex only had eyes for her.

The scotch Maggie drank earlier that evening caused a bittersweet nostalgia to descend. She gently ran the pad of her thumb over the image of her and Alex. 

“Think she was proud of me?” Winn let out a snore, and Maggie snorted, closing the album over again. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

She locked the door as she left, and took the spare key as a promise to see him again, if just to give it back. In her cab home, she watched the city lights pass and thought about how she missed the Superfriends more than she had expected. 

(And she definitely  _ did not _ obsess about Alex turning up to the ceremony and seeing her get promoted). 

When she walked into the bullpen the next day, there was a bottle of her favourite scotch with a card tied at the neck on her desk. She looked over at the detective typing at his desk to her right.

“Who’s this from?”

He didn’t look away from his computer keyboard. “Penny from the office brought it up. Said an FBI agent left it.”

Maggie scoffed, thinking it couldn’t be from Alex, and even if it was, she was long over her ex now, after all. She picked up the card. 

_ Congratulations, Sergeant Sawyer. _

“God dammit,” she swore, trying to fight off the butterflies that erupted.

~

CIs worked roughly the same way in Narcotics, yet something about working with humans exclusively was nastier than it had been when she mixed with the alien community. The crimes and the consequences seemed scummier, somehow. But with every investigation came growth, and the balance between satisfaction and frustration evened each other out from case to case.

She met Winn and James for a drink the next weekend, and then the one after that, and soon it became a habit. When Guardian broke four ribs and twisted his ankle, Winn and Maggie brought the drinks to him. 

When they were in the store picking up snacks, she ran into one of the assistants stacking fruit. A pine box upturned, sending oranges rolling in all directions across the floor. 

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Maggie apologised, immediately bending down to catch as many of the oranges as she could.

“It’s okay,” the assistant said airily, righting the box and dropping some of the oranges back in. 

Maggie caught sight of a rainbow tattoo, a circle not bigger than a coat button, on the inside of the assistant’s wrist. She glanced at the nametag and saw  _ Helen _ , and then got lost in chocolate brown eyes watching her.

“Here,” she said softly, handing over the last orange. 

Their fingertips brushed in the exchange, and they shared a semi-coded smile. Winn slid around the corner, announcing himself with an impatient rattling of a bag of chips.  

When all was said and done, he practically breezed into James’ apartment. “Maggie is dating the greengrocer from Georgina’s.”

James grinned, easing back down on the couch. “Oh, Helen? She’s sweet. Single, too. And gay…”

Maggie rolled her eyes, setting the bags on the counter. “I’m not gonna date the greengrocer.”

But she did date the greengrocer. It was a little mismatched, this sunny vegan grocer and a narcotics detective, but she liked Helen. They four of them fit together well, hanging out at the weekends. Saturday nights were typically spent blowing off steam with pool games between rounds, while sunny Sunday afternoons were spent down at the pier or the docks.  

Then one particular weekend, when Helen was working, Maggie got a strange call from Winn. He was sharp, urgent, cancelling coldly at the last minute and hanging up as soon as he could get her off the phone. She sat in the booth, confused and a little wounded.

Not thirty seconds later, James called. He hadn’t originally been coming, but he asked to meet her. She told him where she was, and fifteen minutes later he trooped up to where she stood by the jukebox.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Everything okay?” She pressed in a song, drawing back. She was cautious, waiting to hear an explanation before reacting. “Winn isn’t usually that sharp.”

“Something happened at the DEO,” he supplied apologetically. “Winn’s pretty stressed. He called me too.”

Maggie abandoned the song choices in concern. “What’s happening?”

He cleared his throat, looking around the bar. “It’s not really my place to say.”

“Is Alex okay? Kara and J’onn?”

“Yeah it’s just…” His eyes landed on the stage, at the singer who was strumming the guitar with such melancholy. “A good friend might be really hurt.” 

“James, it’s okay. I’m not, y’know, in  _ that  _ circle anymore,” she said awkwardly, leading him in the direction of the bar. “I just want to know that no one is hurt.”

“I’m not trying to keep you out of the loop on purpose, Maggie.” He planted his elbows on the bar. “But it’s just not my story to tell you.”

“Okay.” She batted the top of the bar, scanning for a tender. “What happened when Zoe came to town last week?”

His mood lifted, and he seemed relieved by the change in topic. “Oh, I mean, I actually really like her, but she doesn’t want anything solid, and went back to Metropolis again. Just like last time.” He shrugged his shoulder, adding; “She was fun though.”

“She is pretty wild,” Maggie agreed. Zoe kept her updated on the on-off relationship between herself and James. She liked him, but things were hectic with her job, and she didn’t have time to date seriously.

He frowned, looking over at her in realisation. “Wait. You two…?”

“She didn’t tell-?” She stopped short, holding up a finger. “Don’t think about it.”

“Okay…” He guffawed, and then complained, “She just left after two weeks. Shapeshifters are slippy.”

“If it makes you feel any better, she was only supposed to be here for one.”

He considered it. “It kinda does, yeah.”

Finally, one of the bar staff opened the door to the back room. It was Wanda, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed. She bit her bottom lip as she spotted Maggie, drifting over to her.

“Maggie.” Wanda licked her lips and hunkered over the bar. “Jefrone and Nekato are dead.” 

“What?” Maggie spat. “What do you mean?”

“They went home the other week cause their families started sending them weird messages. I’ve just heard that there was a war, and there were these weapons and…” She swiped under her nose, losing steam. “The survivors are coming to Earth, but Jerfone’s brother has his death certificate, and he said Nekato is gone too.”

Maggie collapsed back on her heels in surprise, blowing out a breath. The pair had been regulars in the bar for as long as she had been frequenting it, and had never been anything but civil with her. They were patrons that would be sorely missed.

“What planet was that?” James asked. 

Wanda sniffed. “Cavura.”

“I gotta make a phone call,” he said, taking out his phone and pointing at her. “You okay to sit tight for a minute?”

Maggie nodded, and he practically shot out to the door into the alley. She wasn’t sure what just happened, but it couldn’t be good. 

If she noticed that the next week, Winn looked like he hadn’t slept more than two hours that month, she said nothing. She accepted his apology for being harsh on the phone when he cancelled. 

If she also noticed that for the next few times they went for drinks they both looked rundown, sullen and drained, she didn’t say anything. Eventually they got back to the dynamic duo they were, cracking jokes and making her laugh for a few hours a week. 

But Maggie knew in her heart of hearts one clear fact; someone was dead. 

~

More time passed, Maggie worked steadily. She and Helen came to an abrupt end after a fight over each other’s quirks. It hadn’t turned particularly mean-spirited, per say, but she wasn’t about to change her entire lifestyle for an overly-finicky girlfriend that she just  _ liked _ . 

She kept tabs on SciDiv operations from time to time, and fancied a transfer back, but after riding the waves of four huge drug busts in a row, something unforeseen happened.

Her lieutenant dropped with heart palpitations in an NC-Market when he was out buying flowers for his wife. Next morning, Maggie entered the bullpen to find a request for her to meet the Captain of the precinct. 

She was told she was acting lieutenant, as of that day. It would be during the month of sick leave. She figured she could handle a month of paperwork, especially if she was getting to spend it in an office of her own. 

Then, the Mayor came down on all of National City’s precincts for not hitting  _ his _ targets. A justice advisor put together a damning report and sent it to each of the stations in the city, appealing for change. Maggie put in a formal notice to the Captain that she wasn’t the one qualified for this call to leadership, asking that it be kept for when the  _ actual  _ lieutenant came back.

But a month of sick leave turned into two, and then the sick man decided to accept an early retirement package, and suddenly Maggie wasn’t  _ acting _ lieutenant anymore. 

The Captain shrugged off her complaints about promotion protocol, telling her in plain terms that if she wanted the job, it was hers. The reports were proving to be more than just a political pain in the neck, and he was uninterested in siphoning through the red-tape-laden process for a new lieutenant at that time.

Slowly but surely, the office she had borrowed became her own space. Paperwork got rearranged, bonsai trees were placed on shelves and the blinds were open more often, lightening the place. 

It was there that the air hockey puck finally got a home. When she was commanding her squad, she would toss it from hand to hand, grounding her. 

Months passed as her confidence grew. She adapted to the role and stopped expecting the other shoe to drop with every pitfall. (She had to invest in a smarter day-to-day wardrobe, but the salary bump helped immensely.) 

One day, an FBI agent asked for a meeting with her, and Maggie recognised the name on the email. She primmed her bonsai, suspicious that the email had been vague on details, but figured that it was probably a consultation or an offer of a joint-taskforce to monitor shipments into the docks.

Yet when Agent Yang walked in, Maggie knew something wasn’t right. Yang didn’t walk right, didn’t  _ talk _ right. It had been years since they worked together, but her gut was telling her something was off.

Maggie jumped straight into her own private assessment. “Agent Yang, it’s been a while.”

“Indeed it has, Lieutenant Sawyer.”

She smiled as she shook Yang’s hand and sat down behind the desk, wheeling her chair right in. “How are Philip and the kids?”

Agent Yang froze mid-way to her chair. “Fine.” She sat and fixed her suit jacket. “I understand you’ve been promoted in the last few months as an acting lieutenant, but this promotion was recently legitimised, yes?”

“Yes,” Maggie agreed slowly.  _ Straight in. _ “Are you vetting me, Agent Yang?”

“Perhaps,” Agent Yang said mildly, locking her hands in front of her. “We’ve known there to be moles in the department before.”

“Well, I was part of a task-force that busted a lot of my corrupt colleagues a few years ago, but I’m sure another internal investigation can be conducted if you have any proof.” Maggie shuffled papers on her desk,  _ inching _ . “Are you concerned about how I handle Narcotics?”

Yang shifted in the chair. “Actually, this concerns another detective. We at the bureau wanted to discuss this with a superior officer.”

She narrowed her eyes.  _ Inching.  _ “Who in particular is this about?” 

“It’s about Detective Pearson.”

Detective Pearson was the newest promotion to SciDiv, and reminded Maggie a lot of herself when she started. Brass balls, hard-working, and stubborn. He had come to her for advice when he was promoted. Never wanting to give ground to the DEO, he had caused friction, which led to a serious incident during an operation a few days prior to this meeting.

This also funnelled into Maggie’s current thinking. 

“He isn’t a fan of interagency cooperation,” Yang explained.

_ Inching _ . Maggie sighed. “I wish I could help you, Agent Yang, but I’m not the lieutenant for the Science Division. I’m leading Narcotics, and mostly human narcotics at that.”

Yang sat forward, chair creaking. “We thought, with all of your previous experience, that you could encourage him to pursue a more balanced relationship with our agency.”

Finally, Maggie went for the swift kill; “You mean, tell him to work with you and the DEO?”

“The-the  _ what _ ?”

_ Bingo _ .

Agent Yang’s voice cracked just the right amount to give Maggie a clear indication of who was  _ really _ sitting in front of her. She glanced at the closed doorway and then sat back in her chair. 

“Agent Yang doesn’t have children,” Maggie said. “Come on, J’onn. You may have the appearance of a woman, but you can’t fool me.”

J’onn looked like he was going to protest, Yang’s face twisting, before he sighed. “I’m not going to change into Henshaw, just in case.”

Maggie sat back, victorious. “Why did you come and speak to me? You must know I haven’t been SciDiv in at least two years?”

“Well, you were the greatest ally our organisation ever had. Since Turncoat and the reshuffles, we haven’t been able to foster that relationship as well with any other detective.” He shrugged a shoulder. 

“Why the female disguise?”

Yang’s cheeks grew rosy. “I wasn’t sure how you would react if I turned up. I didn’t want to make this unpleasant.” He huffed out a breath, embarrassed. “We thought we might be able to coax you back to being a liason.”

“We?” She echoed, picking up the air hockey puck from the surface of her desk. “That’s very suggestive, J’onn.”

“And if it is?”

She peeked up at him with a sly smile.  _ Enough time has passed... _ “What’s wrong with Detective Pearson?”

He scowled. “Pearson is quite abrasive.”

“I was too, once,” Maggie reminded him.  _ He just needs to get into one of your agents’ pants. _

She registered the flash of discomfort across Yang’s face, and remembered too late that J’onn was psychic. She cleared her throat. 

“I’ll talk to Pearson, get him off your back.”

“Thank you, Maggie.” 

She spun the hockey puck with two fingers, sure that the psychic could sense the sheer happiness at seeing him-  _ even as a woman _ \- after almost six years. “How are things directing the DEO?”

J’onn, as Yang, smirked. “Well, I took a sabbatical, and have only recently returned to duty. So I suppose if you want the answer to that question, you’d have to refer to Director Danvers.”

“Yeah?” Maggie huffed out a laugh, letting the puck spin on its own. “That must be something.”

“Oh, yes it is.”

~

And then, seven years after splitting up with Alex- 

(who Maggie had by now resigned herself to believing was the love of her life) 

-she was asked by the Commissioner to do some community outreach programmes. It was an initiative pushed forward by the Mayor, so disgruntled or not, cops of all departments didn’t have much choice.

After the meeting, a staff member from the Mayor’s office pulled her aside and congratulated her, saying that hers was one department they had been impressed by when they formulated the justice report, and had been monitoring in the months since. She was told that if she continued to create more buzz around her name and to prove her own leadership capabilities, she could be given the keys to the castle soon enough. 

Maggie was a cop long enough to reach between the corporate lines.  _ Captain Sawyer _ , she thought as she shook hands with her superiors and left headquarters.  _ Sounds pretty good _ . 

Unfortunately, she was tied up dealing with the fallout from a bust that went awry, and by the time she responded to the community initiative, her request to take part in a narcotics-based placement was denied. She called the Mayor’s office, and asked to be put through to the coordinator of the project. 

_ “Lieutenant Sawyer! Good afternoon, I’ve just seen that your request to give that series of talks at Sun & Stars Rehabilitation Centre has been declined. It’s already being taken by Detective Henderson.” _

Maggie held the phone to her ear with one hand, watering her office bonsais with the other. “Okay, so what’s left?”

_ “There is a link program with one of the local schools? Once a week, Tuesday afternoons for four months, schedule permitting?” _

_ I can do that easy _ , she decided. The coordinator agreed to sent over the details, but before she could read the email, she was called out to an urgent meeting request with two of the handlers in her squad.

Of course, since she hadn’t gotten around to reading the email until the night before her first day, she completely misunderstood. She had thought she would be sent into one of the local high schools to give a series of lectures on drug awareness. But that wasn’t the case at all.

And  _ that _ is how she found herself dressed in her officer’s uniform, in front of a class of wide-eyed first graders.

Mrs Farmer beamed. “Today class, Detective Sawyer is here to talk about road safety.”

Maggie nodded at Mrs Farmer, and then scanned the fascinated faces of the first graders, knowing it was far too late to pack it all in and go home to her scotch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, you know where this is going...  
> Drop me a line, let me know if you have any theories about where this is going, and what Alex has been up to for 7 years.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has followed and supported this wacky roadtrip. I hope you like how it ends! It's extra long for y'all.

It didn’t go as horribly wrong as she thought it would.

There was a certain performance that had to be done in front of kids that age, she learned quickly, following the teacher’s lead. The kids were attentive, and with some help from Mrs Farmer, she fell into the rhythm of it. 

From the pack that had been left on her desk that morning, she gave each of the first graders a traffic light to colour in. Her eyes grew wide as they all dashed for first pick of the crayons. 

As Mrs Farmer came to stand beside her, Maggie shrugged sheepishly and said, “I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this.”

Mrs Farmer smiled brightly. “Actually, I think you did pretty well.”

Maggie noticed one of the kids colouring the last light in blue, instead of green, and shook her head. “Kids are weird.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Mrs Farmer said under her breath, before tearing off in the direction of a child trying to put a crayon up their nose. 

Maggie suppressed a laugh, and started packing all of the other items she had used back into the box. Then, she felt her sleeve being tugged. She looked down to see a little girl with brunette hair and big green eyes looking up at her. It was the girl who had been colouring the traffic light in blue. 

“Detective Sawyer?” she said shyly.

Maggie let go of the box and knelt down beside her. “You were colouring the light in blue.”

The girl beamed, pleased that she had noticed. “Yes!”

“Why’s that?”

The girl scrunched up her nose. “Because I don’t like green.”

Maggie chuckled. “You got a question?” The little girl nodded eagerly. “Shoot.”

“Do you know my mommy? She has pictures of you.”  _ Uh oh. _ “My auntie too. They’re in a big box at granny’s house.”

A laugh escaped her because dear  _ Lord _ , what were the chances of this being a kid of someone she had been with in her long, messy history?

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “What’s her name?”

Before the girl could reply, an exasperated Mrs Farmer rushed over.

“Jennifer Danvers, leave the poor detective alone! You shouldn’t be out of your seat!”

Danvers.  _ Danvers _ . 

Those green eyes were nothing like Alex’s brown ones, but the gleeful curiosity in them was Alex Danvers through and through. 

_ Oh, fuck. _

~

Over the next few weeks, Maggie ended up doting on the child. Jenny was keen to please, alert and bright. She had quirks, like all of the kids, and while Maggie tried not to show favouritism, she couldn’t deny something tethered this girl into more and more of her thoughts. 

The Tuesday before Mother’s day, the class made flowers made of tissue and felt pipe-cleaners. Maggie caught sight of  _ Alex _ messily scrawled across a pink and purple card. 

_ Well, that confirms that. _

Jenny’s flowers had blue stalks, instead of green.

_ “Blue flowers too, huh?” _

_ “I don’t like green!” _

Another memorable afternoon was when the kids tried to beg her to come to their parents evening, singsonging her name until Mrs Farmer finally came to her aid. In her cruiser after the session, the childish pleading was still rang in her ears.  _ Seeing Alex again… _

She took her hat off and threw it into the passenger seat, untangling her hair, fingertips unconsciously grazing over that flaming mark. 

Maggie had been dancing around the idea of therapy for a long time, only choosing to go when she was given the lieutenant’s position. The change in responsibility and work, as well as being validated as an authority figure for her squad, had made her question many aspects of her life and her future. 

As soon as Jenny Danvers popped into her life, into her head, the sessions became much less about  _ this is what happened _ and much more about  _ this is what is happening. _

It had taken her a while to trust Dr Fletcher and his skeletal features, but he proved to be exactly the right person to poke and prod at her words, unravelling her issues bit by bit. She both hated and respected his sharp rebuttals and harsh advice. 

Therefore, when it came to it spilling all of the recent confusion, he got right to the point. 

“Have you changed your mind on children?”

“No, I…” She dropped her face into her hands for a second. “I don’t know.” She sat up again.  “This is what I wanted for her, for Alex. And if I’m being honest, I’ve definitely fantasised about meeting her again, seeing her happy, or maybe even  _ making _ her happy again.”

She hated how selfish, how vulnerable the admission was, but she also knew that the only way therapy worked was through her own honesty. “I guess I just never expected to run into her kid.”

Dr Fletcher adjusted the screen on his laptop with a hum. “When was the last time you saw your ex-fiancee?”

“Our paths have crossed a couple of times but I haven’t actually spoken to her since we were having the…” She squirmed, searching for a decent description, before finally giving up and muttering, “Hate sex.”

“Hate sex? Can you explain further?”

“You want a blow by blow?”

“If that’s what you’re comfortable with,” Dr Fletcher dared, his eyes on his laptop.

Maggie’s hands gripped the couch. “We hooked up once or twice after we actually broke up. They were both spur of the moment, messy times.”

“Was it good?”

She gawped at him across the drab office. “What kinda question is that?”

“Just trying to gauge your emotional state at the time,” he said calmly. “You were going to marry this woman. Surely you’d been passionate and, indeed, intimate with her before.” Fletcher’s spidery hands danced on his keyboard, restless but not typing. “You just said that it was spur of the moment, and messy. Were you two usually like that?”

“Sometimes. After a big...case,” she said carefully, but then thought about it. “But it was never really like  _ that _ .”

“Do you think you’re the same people you were seven years ago?”

“Obviously not. She’s head of- uh, high up in the FBI. She’s got a kid. Jenny’s probably got another mom.” She thought about the flowers Jenny had made in class that day. The card read  _ Alex _ only, and she hadn’t made a second… 

“And you? Have you changed?” he prompted.

“Yeah. I’ve jumped into a very different role than where I was seven years ago, career wise. I’m even thinking about going further with it.” She rubbed her palms together. “I’ve had relationships that were much healthier than they were before Alex. I’ve kept in contact with the friends I’ve made. I think I’m better all round.”

Dr Fletcher bobbed his head slowly as she talked, and kept on even when she was quiet. “You once told me that you always wanted to get a dog.”

“Yeah. I still do.” 

She sensed that something was brewing, and decided to go along with the stream. After all, she came to therapy for answers, to disentangle things she had left in disarray emotionally for too long. “It’s weird you mention that because once upon a time, Alex and I had a running joke about the dog we were gonna get.”

Fletcher hummed. “You’re worried about transferring your issues to someone who is in your care?”

Maggie sat back, giving him the wheel. “Correct.”

He took off his glasses. “And also the responsibilities that come with looking after that someone or something in your care?”

“Yes...”

“But you want to work on them, yes?”

“That’s why I’m paying you, right?” Maggie joked. 

Dr Fletcher smirked, biting on the edge of his glasses for a second before sliding them back on.

“So, why don’t you start with a puppy?”

~

The very next day she made a list of local breeders around National City, a few breeds in mind. She set aside her next day off to visit each place on the list. 

Over the course of the afternoon, she picked up dozens of pups. She felt their warm fur, wondering where she would find her perfect companion. It was, she supposed, the equivalent of window shopping. Essentially, she was just looking, just inquiring. 

But then she reached the last kennel of the day, and the sun was getting low. In a pen of excited german shepherd pups, yipping and jumping towards her, one hung back. It was smaller than the rest, and though it stayed away from the rest of the litter, its brown eyes stayed on her the entire time, curious and timid. 

She didn’t intend to put down a deposit or make any kind of promises, but she fell in love with the runt of the litter because she knew what it was like to be small and scared.

She held the whining bundle in her arms, scratching behind its ears. 

“What’s your name, hmm?” 

The pup, of course, couldn’t answer. It just leaned into her chest, whimpering, and Maggie felt a burst of adoration. 

This was the one.  

~

Maggie strolled along the school corridors towards the classroom, making a mental note of everything she had to do after she finished with the session. She faced a mountain of paperwork on her desk at the station, but before she could start it, she needed to resolve a nasty situation between two detectives who were butting heads with their handler.

_ Maybe leadership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. _

She realised that coming here once a week was becoming less of a chore and more of a welcome break. She looked forward to spending the day teaching first graders about why they shouldn’t run off with strangers.

There was commotion from a room to her left, and she slowed as she reached the doorway. There was a large red cross sticker on the door just beneath  _ Nurse’s Station _ in white print. Inside, Jenny Danvers sat on the bed, refusing to let Mrs Farmer look at her bleeding knee.

“Come on, Jenny,” Mrs Farmer pleaded.

“No!”

“We’ve got to patch up that knee before class starts again.”

“What happened?” Maggie asked, coming into the room. 

Mrs Farmer shot her a grateful look, obviously glad to have another adult present. “Jenny fell in the playground and she hurt her knee, but she won’t let me put a bandaid on it.”

Jenny Danvers sat with a trembling pout and glassy eyes, her arms crossed over her chest. Stubborn and strong, just like her mother. 

Maggie never could resist a Danvers pout. “Hey, Mrs Farmer. Is it okay if I do it?” 

Mrs Farmer considered it warily, but sighed. To Jenny, she said: “Would you like Detective Sawyer to patch up your knee?”

In an instant, Jenny melted, nodding. Maggie switched places with the teacher, taking off her patrol hat and reaching for the supplies on the bed while Mrs Farmer went to fill a bowl with warm water.

It might have been low, but Maggie couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know everything about the life that this little girl was living.  _ Alex Danvers’ daughter. _

“When you fall over at home, what does your mom do to cheer you up?”

A sniff. “We eat ice cream and watch cartoons until I feel better.”

_ Nothing’s changed then. _

Maggie smiled inwardly as she took the cotton bud and soaked it in the bowl of warm water. After alien-related injuries, Alex and Maggie would curl in front of the fireplace and watch trash T.V. Sometimes they would feed each other spoonfuls of vegan ice cream. 

(Other times, the uninjured one would go down on the other until suddenly  _ everything _ felt better). 

“How would you like to be a brave police officer?” Maggie offered.

Jenny lit up. “You mean like you?”

Maggie grinned. “Sure thing, kiddo. Just like me. You gonna be really brave?”

The girl nodded enthusiastically. Maggie carefully swiped the damp cotton against the shallow grazes. She heard a sharp inhale of breath, but Jenny was biting her lip in concentration, determined to be brave. 

She made sure the cuts were cleaned, and then took a bandaid out of the first aid kit. She unwrapped it from the packaging, and gently smoothed it onto the injured knee. It had green and blue dinosaurs on it. 

Maggie grabbed her uniform hat from the bed and placed it on Jenny’s head. The girl was far too small for it, and the hat came down over her eyes and nose. It bobbled to and fro as the girl giggled, kicking her feet out.

“All better, Officer Danvers.”

From under the brim of the hat, Jenny gave a wide smile. One of her front teeth was missing, and Maggie lost her heart to a Danvers once again

~

Maggie wandered through the park with her hands in her back pockets, watching all of the dogs whizzing around their owners or chasing after toys. She mused over what it would be like to spend her free afternoons with her new pup, when she went to collect them on Tuesday-

“Mommy, look! It’s the policewoman who comes into our school!”

“Jennifer Danvers, get back here!”

_ Oh God. _

“Detective Sawyer!” called the little voice.

Maggie turned, seeing Jennifer Danvers running full pelt at her. A few steps behind was-

While she concentrated on the girl, her heart rate spiked as she caught a glimpse of a face she hadn’t seen in seven years. 

“Well, hey there, Officer Danvers.” Maggie crouched down, beaming. “How’s the wounded knee?”

Jenny lifted her leg. “All better!”

“That’s good to hear. Did the dinos help?”

“Yes! But only the blue ones.”

Maggie took a deep breath as booted feet came into her eyeline.  _ Like a bandaid.  _ She looked straight up at Alex, hoping she was schooling her features enough to at least appear to be calm, despite the clusterbomb going off inside her chest.

“Hello there,” she greeted, like an old friend. 

“Detective Sawyer,” Alex returned. “I’ve been hearing all about you from this one.” She ran her hand affectionately over the top of Jenny’s head.

“I bet it’s almost like you already know me,” Maggie teased, if only to trigger Jenny’s reaction.

She shifted on her haunches while the girl bounced excitedly. “I  _ told you _ mommy had pictures of you!”

Alex and Maggie shared a half amused, half embarrassed look. How could they explain their history to this child? She stood up and brushed down her knees. 

Before either of them could wiggle out of this awkward, bizarre run-in, Jenny grabbed Maggie’s hand in her own smaller one.

“Will you come and get ice cream with us?” she pleaded.

Alex, exasperated, tried to be diplomatic. “Jenny, Detective Sawyer is very busy. She probably has things-” 

“It’s okay. I’ll come.” She arched an eyebrow at Jenny. “But only if I can get mint.” 

With a happy cheer, Jenny tore off in the direction of the nearest ice cream truck.

“You don’t still eat gross vegan ice cream?” Alex murmured, keeping her eye on her daughter.

“If there’s anyone I’m gonna make an exception for, it’s your kid, Danvers,” Maggie replied honestly. 

They ambled without speaking. Alex kept watching Jenny. Maggie let her attention wander around the park, kicking the occasional loose piece of gravel from the path. 

“I’ve never been very good at small talk,” Alex said finally, her hands slipping into her jacket pockets. 

Maggie nodded, watched a dog twirl in circles, chasing its tail, before finally catching it with a bite. It froze, confused. Chuckling, she finally mustered the courage to look over at Alex, who was already watching her with apprehension. 

“You look good,” she said plainly. 

Caught off guard by the compliment, Alex huffed out a breath. “Thanks.” She glanced at Maggie coyly. “You too, by the way.”

Maggie grinned and allowed herself to really look at Alex. It was then, lumbering through the park, that she recognised the design of the jacket over Alex’s shoulders, the cut of the leather, the rustic-sheen on the buttons. 

“Well, I did say you looked good in my jacket, didn’t I?”

Alex was still flustered by the comment when Maggie insisted on buying the two tubs and one cone. They took up residence on a bench at the side of a playpark, and after Jenny devoured her cone, she was ready to go and play again. It was only when she had went down the slide twice that Alex spoke. 

“So, how are you? J’onn said you made lieutenant?”

“Well, they made me lieutenant for now. They’re trying to convince me to stay on and accept the promotion. Otherwise they’ll have to reshuffle or look externally.” Maggie dug the neon blue spoon into her ice cream. “And you? Still Director Danvers?”

“You heard about that?”

“I heard about that.”

Maggie watched Jenny hopping impatiently behind a little boy who was hesitating with the monkey bars.  _ Just like her mother. _

“Your kid is really smart.” She pointed at Jenny with her spoon. “Not that I would expect any different.”

Alex gaze softened as she watched Jenny swinging from the monkey bars. “She’s excelling in most areas, but she’s lagging a little in math. I’m not too concerned at this stage but…” She sighed, digging back into her ice cream.

“She’s a kid. Give it time.” 

Dr Fletcher’s bony face apparitated in her mind, and she thought about their sessions. How would he react to this story? Still, she saw an opening and dove straight for it.

“Gotta admit,” she started, tipping her tub and scraping the ice cream to one side. “Ice cream in the park on a sunny day is way better than trying to get Emily to come to dinner.” 

It was a risky joke, because after seven years, she had no idea how Alex would take it. But it paid off, because Alex snorted and licked some of the cream coloured liquid dripping from her finger. 

(In retrospect, Maggie thought getting ice cream with an ex that she still got hot thinking about was a bad idea, because ice cream dripping along those doctor’s hands made her brain short-circuit.) 

“Glad that I rank higher in your ex approval rating.” 

~

They spent half an hour together in the park, and ended up walking back to Alex’s apartment because it happened to be on the same route as her own. She found out that Alex had been living there for nearly three and a half years, which almost made Maggie trip up. Their apartments were now a twenty five minute journey apart on foot; walking distance.

Jenny was full of questions as she hopped between them; 

_ “Where’s your uniform, Detective Sawyer?” _

_ “Can I tell my friends I saw you outside the classroom?” _

_ “If you and mommy were friends before, why aren’t you friends now?” _

After waving goodbye to Maggie, Jenny skipped up the stairs to the building, and the pair went from the innocent comfortable bubble that children brought with them, back into the cold reality they lived in. She appraised the brickwork, impressed with the upgrade.

“It was good to see you, today,” Alex said, hands skittering across her stomach and hips. “Thanks again for everything with Jenny. She won’t stop talking about you.”

Maggie nodded, glancing at the top of the steps, where Jenny skipped from foot to foot, waiting on Alex. She had dreamed of this scenario in the lonelier moments, from lying in her drafty safehouse during Turncoat, to sitting in the austere office of Dr Fletcher. She wasn’t about to waste an opportunity because of pride. 

“Hey, I don’t want this to sound too forward or anything, and if you want me to disappear let me know but…” 

“But?” Alex prompted.

She sought out the courage to meet Alex’s eye. “Wanna grab some coffee sometime? I had fun talking to you and I’d like to catch up a little more.”

Alex looked up at Jenny, who had stopped jumping around and was now observing them with interest. For a single, sickening moment, Maggie realised she hadn’t even asked Alex if they were going home to someone. 

“Dinner on me?” she replied, pausing to make a face at her daughter, which had Jenny giggling. “As a thank you for the ice cream, and for all the laughter?” 

Maggie chuckled, relieved. “I’m not gonna turn that offer down, Danvers.”

Alex turned back to her, a wide smile on her face, and Maggie already started preparing her answers for Dr Fletcher.

~

When they both negotiated that they were free the rest of the evening, Alex called her sister for babysitting duties. While she was on the phone, Jenny grabbed Maggie’s hand and started pulling her this way and that before she even got adjusted to the new apartment. She pointed at various things seemingly at random, chatting Maggie’s ear off, giving her anecdotes and silly jokes for days. 

Maggie’s heart lurched as she realised she wasn’t overwhelmed; she loved it.

Kara was over in no time, chasing her giggling niece once around the entire living room before even noticing the other person present. 

“Sergeant Sawyer,” Kara said, blindsided. She glanced at Alex, and then Maggie, and did the math. “Hello, Maggie.”

“Hey, Kara,” Maggie said. “And it’s Lieutenant Sawyer, actually. For now.”

Alex scooped Jenny up onto her hip. The first grader was vibrating with excitement, and it made Maggie smirk. 

“Is Detective Sawyer staying for dinner?” she piped up.

Alex smiled. “No, honey, the detective and I are going out. You’re going to have dinner with Auntie Kara.”

Jenny pouted. “No dino nuggets?”

Kara stepped in, tickling Jenny under the arms. “Oh, we’ll still have dino nuggets.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We might even a cookie after.”

This brightened the girl up dramatically, and she wriggled to get free of Alex’s arms. “Auntie Kara, come see what I did at school yesterday!”

As soon as Alex put her down, she ran to her bag but got distracted by something inside, leaving the three adults alone in the kitchen. While the initial surprise had worn off, Kara still seemed perplexed at Maggie’s presence. 

Alex checked her watch, and then put a hand on Maggie’s bicep. “Give me ten minutes to change and I’ll be ready to go.”

Maggie nodded as Alex walked away. (She could still feel a tingling in her bicep.) 

“This is unexpected,” Kara said quietly.

Maggie looked at her, trying to recall the last time she actually interacted with Kara, not just watching her on the news. They moved more towards the kitchen table. “It is. Jenny recognised me in the park. It’s my day off.”

They took seats at the glasstop dining table that Maggie recognised from Alex’s old apartment. She swallowed, remembering that last encounter she had had with it, and was unable to suppress the flicker of arousal that sparked inside. 

“She said you’ve been coming into their school once a week,” Kara said. “She adores you, by the way. We’re having trouble convincing her that she isn’t old enough to join the police force.”

“I can give her a word of warning if you guys want that,” Maggie said, holding her hands up in mock defence.

Kara unlocked her phone as it buzzed, and Maggie let her gaze roam around the airy apartment. It was bigger, spacious, which Maggie suspected was thanks to the bump in Alex’s salary since she was promoted. There was a littering of certain objects that Maggie recognised; the knife board, the white ornaments, the fawny panting that used to stretch over Alex’s headboard. 

Scanning around, she couldn’t see the circular sculpture that had hung just outside the bathroom in the old apartment, which she thought odd, since Alex had once said was her favourite.  

In her search, Maggie spotted the traffic light worksheet pinned onto the fridge. Her lips twitched at the circles coloured in red, orange and blue.

Then she blinked in realisation, twisting back to Kara. 

“You know, I really appreciated you, James and Winn coming to the ceremony when I was promoted to Sergeant.”

Kara pointed at her, not looking away from her phone as she continued to type with her other hand. “I know what you’re trying to get out of me, Maggie.”

She smirked. “Damn, you’ve gotten quicker.” 

“I’m not just a junior reporter anymore.” Kara perked up, hearing something with her powers that the human ear couldn’t. Relaxing again, she smiled at Maggie. “If you want to know what I think you want to know, you’ll have to find your own source.”

_ In other words, ask her yourself. _

~

Alex mentioned that there were a number of nice places nearby to get coffee, since it was on the early side for dinner. They settled at a cafe looking out onto a square, watching people conducting their weekend business unhurried by work.

They lost track of the clock’s hands on the belltower at the other side of the square, immersed in trading stories about Jenny in school. She heard about Kara’s promotion-

_ “She’s getting so cocky. It’s like she’s smelled blood in the water and thinks she’s the next Cat Grant.” _

-about the tipped power dynamics between her and J’onn when he returned to work under her-

_ “He calls me Ma’am, Maggie. A year has passed with him being back and it still feels wrong.” _

-and informed Alex of the ongoing debate about whether she would stay on permanently as a lieutenant-

_ “You have no idea. Directing those cops to work together is way harder than the first graders.” _

By the time her stomach rumbled, Maggie realised that the shadows had lengthened around the square, the sun beginning to dip behind the spire of the belltower. She had been so drawn into their conversation, how it flowed from one thing to the next, how  _ easy  _ it was to talk to Alex. 

She sat up straight. “Dinner?”

Alex looked over at the belltower, blinking in surprise. “Oh, okay. I didn’t realise…”

Clearly, she too had been swept up in the stories. Maggie’s stomach clenched again, but not because of hunger. 

They wandered around the corner to an Italian restaurant that had an open rooftop terrace. 

“This place is nice,” Alex said, craning her head up at the fairylights adorning the open restaurant top above them. “It does nice pasta.”

“Lead the way,” Maggie said.  

A woman in the black and white restaurant uniform greeted them from a boxed in cloakroom and tapped at a computer as she booked them in for table. She offered to take their jackets, and they shared a single look before agreeing.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Alex said, slipping off her jacket. “How exactly does a narcotics detective get roped into giving a first grade class stranger danger talks?”

“Oh, well, just wait until the one about what to do when you find dirty needles in the playground.” Maggie laughed at the surprise on Alex’s face. “I’m kidding. No need to go all One Million Moms on me.”

Maggie took her keys and phone out of her jacket pocket before handing it to the woman in the cloakroom, and she noticed Alex doing the same. As they were led upstairs to the terrace, she repressed the fleeting notion that this felt like a date, mentally smacking herself in the forehead.

Taking their seats and thanking the server for the menus, Maggie planted her keys on the table top.

“Still don’t trust anyone not to steal your keys?” Alex asked, flipping open her menu.

“Like you haven’t done the same?”

Alex rolled her eyes, but retrieved her keys from her pocket and set them beside Maggie’s. “I’m just assuming the worst about people.”

They got settled in, exchanging more stories from the last seven years, skirting around any major, heavy subject. Maggie wanted to maintain the positivity that this reunion had, one she had longed for so many times, and it seemed Alex did too. 

National City’s nightlife stirred as the sun went down, and they stayed for desert. Maggie spied a woman ordering the tiramisu a table over, and saw that it came in a large portion. Whether it was the magic of the restaurant and the fairy lights, or whether it was the unreality of seeing her ex again, she asked if Alex might fancy splitting a slice. 

She did.

“So does Jenny-” Maggie glanced around them as she sank her spoon into the desert. “Does she know that her Auntie Kara is Supergirl?”

“No, God no. Not yet.” Alex scooped her own bite. “I’m terrified that someone will use her as collateral, some day.”

Maggie chewed slowly, savouring the flavour. She imagined Alex to be like a mother bear protecting her cub if someone threatened Jenny. She was ferocious enough when someone threatened her little sister, but her child… “You’d never let anyone hurt her.”

“Over my dead body,” Alex warned, gripping her spoon and plunging it harder into the desert.

Maggie expected nothing less. “Is she your biological daughter?”

Alex shook her head. “Adopted.”

She waited for an explanation, but Alex continued to eat. “Do I get a story?”

Swallowing, Alex wavered. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Absolutely. I’ve had to entertain a lot of your kid’s wacky ideas in the classroom, so I wanna know her villainous backstory.”

Alex laughed at that, some of the tension draining away. “I was dating an alien named-”

“ _ You _ dated an alien?”

“A few, actually,” Alex admitted. “But Rachael was special. She was the only one who ever knew I worked for the DEO, and that’s only because when we started getting serious, J’onn went on his sabbatical and I was promoted.”

“Wow, look at you and your dodgy ethics,” Maggie jeered.

“I think she was uh-” Alex flicked her eyes up to Maggie’s and then away again. “I think she was the only woman since you that I really loved.”

“Oh,” Maggie paused, “And Jenny?” She plugged her mouth with a bite of dessert, not wanting to embarrass herself.

Alex rested her spoon on the edge of the bowl, swiping her mouth with a napkin. “One of my agents killed her parents by accident. They were innocent passerbys during an operation. Vertillians pretending to be humans, you know? Except these folks, they were actually human. Wrong place, wrong time.” 

She slowly tore her napkin in half, and Maggie wasn’t sure if she realised she had done it. She lowered her voice. “I brought this scared, traumatised toddler to the DEO, and she just clung to me. I remember thinking she was like a little duckling imprinting.” She took a deep breath. “She screamed every time someone tried to take her away from me. And then suddenly I just- I didn’t want to be away from her.”

The tiramisu got stuck in Maggie’s throat, and she washed it down with a mouthful of water. “You took her in because of guilt?”

Alex’s fists tightened on the ripped napkin. “I took her in because I wanted her.” 

There was a steeliness there, a defiance, and Maggie thought that Alex had probably had this argument with others before her. She got her answer in another bite back; “Rachael said the same thing. We argued a lot about it, especially the first few nights in our apartment. It was hard, suddenly adjusting to the idea of looking after a toddler. But then it just...became easier, and Rachael came around.  

“We almost broke up, multiple times, but it all settled and it was really good for a while. Months, actually. We were like-” Alex stopped, and Maggie knew that they were on the precipice of something big, something Alex had been working up to.

“Then, we got a distress signal in from her family. We agreed that she should travel back to her home planet, and when she got back, we could try patch things up properly, be a real family, maybe. When she left, we were on pretty good terms. I was hopeful.”

“And when she came back?”

The water shook as Alex lifted the glass, taking a long draw, and then; 

“She was Cavurian.”

Cavura; the planet that had burned in a bloody global conflict, pitting the nations of that planet against each other. Millions died in the violence, millions more in the famine and disease that followed. It was devastated, the bioweapons used had created nothing more than a wasteland.

Maggie remembered Jefrone and Nekato, the two friends that went home to save their families. Remembered James storming out to make a phone call when Wanda told them about the refugees.

The breath rushed out of her. “Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry-”

“It’s okay,” Alex said quickly. “It was two years ago. I just…I haven’t really dated since.” 

Tears shone, reflecting the stringed lights, but she blinked them away. “I miss her all the time,” she admitted quietly.

Maggie put her spoon down and wiped her mouth with her own napkin. Alex’s face was lined with sorrow, and she despaired at the grief. All she had ever wanted for her was happiness, and clearly she had found it again just to have it ripped away.

“You know,” Alex said suddenly, picking up her spoon and setting it against the inside of the bowl this time. “I was in a really bad motorcycle accident about six? Seven years ago? It was just after you disappeared- uh, when you went undercover with Turncoat.”

Maggie remembered the bandages, the bruising, the blood bags. “I know.”

“You do?”

Alex’s brow was furrowed, and it dawned on Maggie very quickly.

“Wait, Kara didn’t tell you she saw me?” 

“She told me after I got your note that she ran into you once when you were undercover. That you were alive. She didn’t mention anything about telling you...my condition.” 

Maggie stared at Alex across the table, listening to the chatter of the other diners and the soft lull of stringed instruments over the speakers, before letting out a snort. “Kara Danvers learned to bend the truth at last.”

Alex frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I came to see you in the hospital, Danvers.” 

The call, the bar, the cab, the hospital, it all came back to her. She remembered the concrete stairwell, rocking Kara back and forward as she wept for Alex. It hit her then that sitting on that hard step, she had no idea it would be possible to sit here in a restaurant with Alex again. 

_ You can't go to dinner with the dead. _

“I’d given Darla a number to call for emergencies, and I was only three weeks into the Operation Turncoat when she called. I was mad until she told me what happened. Her girlfriend at the time was one of your ICU nurses, sneaked me in. Just before I left, I ran into Kara.”

It was clear that this news rocked Alex. “You broke cover to visit me?”

“It was bad, at the beginning. Really bad. And I couldn’t have lived with myself if…”

Alex shook her head slowly, her hair falling around her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say. I was so relieved when I got your note, when I got that confession out of Kara that you were alive.” Her lips twitched and she looked away as she grew bashful. “I read her article over and over again until I could practically say the words out loud myself.”

“Oh yeah?” Maggie chuckled. “It was a pretty good scoop for her.”

Alex finished her water and reached to pour more out of the jug on the table. Maggie nodded when she offered to refill her glass too. Unable to hold back the inquisition any longer, she asked, “You were there when I was promoted to sergeant, weren’t you?”

Alex blushed, putting the jug down and spinning it by the handle a few inches. “I was there through the whole ceremony, but I got cold feet and left before I could talk to you.”

“Count yourself lucky you didn’t stick around. You would have had to see some overweight chiefs trying to flirt with Supergirl.”

“Embarrassing,” Alex hissed.

Maggie grinned as the mood rose from the trough it had fallen to. “Jenny wants to be a cop, right?”

Alex narrowed her eyes, picking up her spoon again and jabbing it in Maggie’s direction. “Don’t you dare.” 

~

It was a fair Saturday night, and they decided to walk back home. They continued to rib each other over old memories, _good_ _times_ , until their laughter tapered off to a comfortable silence.

The night felt pure, but it didn’t feel like the closure Maggie had been expecting. She had tried to shove down the feeling that it was a date, even if Alex had dropped the offer of coffee for one of dinner. Seven years had passed, and she wasn’t sure if Alex felt the same way as she did, anymore. 

They had delved into some deep, emotional places during their meal and after, and Alex seemed deep in thought as they cut through the square. 

She nudged Alex’s elbow with her own. “What’s on your mind?”

The clock on the belltower chimed, signalling the hour. Alex waited until the clanging noise had stopped before answering, “Did you come to say goodbye? In the hospital?”

Maggie had looked down at Alex’s face in the hospital and asked if she was still in there, or had already moved on. Maybe, in that way, it was a goodbye. She had prayed for life, without even being sure it was still there in the first place. 

“I really hoped it wasn’t the  _ end _ , but it was a bike crash. Your chances weren’t great. I mean, I knew you were a fighter and all but...”

A horn blasted a street over, and Maggie swallowed at those old visions she had conjured of the crash. Alex being thrown from her bike, the sickening impact of the tarmac- 

“It was all I thought about for days after,” she continued gravely. “I kept having this voice in my head, reminding me that at any moment, Eliza and Kara and everyone could be stood around your bedside, switching off the machines. It made me sick to my stomach.”

Alex seemed to absorb the information with a slow nod. And in all of those seven years, Maggie never realised what it must have been like to wake up and be told you almost died. Sure, from alien attacks, or mind-control, or Cadmus. But from an accident?

“Grace told me you weren’t in any pain so I guess part of me thought that was the best way if you were gonna, y’know, go,” she said.

“Believe me, when I woke up, there was a lot of pain,” Alex said dryly.

They shared a hollow laugh, before the sombre mood descended again as they reached the main street. 

“When I saw those headlights, I thought it was over,” Alex confessed. She watched the traffic running along beside them as she spoke. “I thought about all of the people who mattered most to me.” Her eyes dropped to their feet, but Maggie kept watching her face. “I thought about you being missing, and I just...you were there Maggie. Kara and Mom and Dad and J’onn and... _ you _ .”

Maggie slipped her hands into her pockets, because the urge to reach over and entwine her fingers with Alex’s was almost overpowering. Alex had thought about her. In that split second where she realised her life was about to end, she had been in Alex’s heart.

She noticed the slight hobble in Alex’s figure. “You okay?”

Alex shrugged a shoulder. “The crash did some nasty work on my hips. When I’m on my feet all day, it can get a little stiff at night. Hence the limp.” 

Maggie checked her watch and groaned. “I didn’t mean to keep you out so long, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” A smile burst across Alex’s face. “I had a good time.”

They stayed quiet until they reached the bottom of Alex’s steps. Maggie tapped the railing a few times, and then said, “I always thought you were the one that got away, Danvers.”

Alex closed her eyes, like she had expected Maggie to say something like that. But then her lips twitched and she nodded, like she was agreeing. When she reopened her eyes, they glistened in the streetlights. 

“Keep in touch? Then I won’t be away.” 

Maggie fumbled to get her phone out of her pocket, bringing up a saved note and handing it to Alex. “Here’s my new number.”

As Alex carefully typed the number into her own phone, she tapped the railing again and joked, “I hope Jenny is in bed sleeping. I know tomorrow is Sunday, but still.”

Alex scoffed. “Unlikely, if her Auntie Kara has anything to do with it.” 

When Maggie took her phone back, their fingertips brushed momentarily. Alex cleared her throat, yanking back her hand and jamming it into her pocket. “You know, if you ever want to come and get ice cream with us again, I’m sure Jenny would be over the moon.” 

Maggie’s stomach curled in upon itself, and despite everything, she nodded. “Sure.”

“It’s the usual Saturday afternoon activity.” Alex shrugged. 

“Should I wear my uniform next time?” She meant it because Jenny loved it, like a dress up outfit, but the way Alex’s eyes darkened gave it an entirely different meaning.

“If you want.”

She thought about how she had planned to pick up her pup on Tuesday morning and, health and safety permitting, bring her in to show Mrs Farmer’s class in the afternoon. “Maybe I should bring my new puppy. I’ll have her by then.” 

Alex laughed. “Jenny really doesn’t need to be more excitable.”

“It could be fun, though?”

The agent softened, and listed closer. “Yeah, I think it could be.”

~

Maggie walked the rest of the way home, the evening dry and the journey not as lengthy as she expected. Just to think, all that time they shared a park, lived so close…

The elevator had been in need of repairs for a while, and she didn’t even check if it was working before she trudged up the stairs. She reached into her pocket, but her keys felt unnaturally heavier. She pulled them out.

“What the hell?”

They weren’t her keys. She pried open a small leather case to find a plastic keyring inside; the picture was of Alex and Kara, with Jenny squished between them. She had the wrong set. They hadn’t even checked when they left the restaurant, too engrossed in each other’s company to check which set of keys they had. 

That meant Alex had hers. “Shit.”

She stared at the keys, thinking about the crash, the time undercover, her promotions,  _ Alex’s promotion _ , her time in the classroom, her therapy sessions, and it all accumulated in one conclusion; this wasn’t a coincidence. 

Maggie’s mind snowballed; they had orbited each other for seven years, perhaps it was time they got on the same trajectory again. This magnetism that prevented her from ever fully prying her life away from Alex was a force she had fought to put behind her for so long, but now she wanted to give in. She  _ wanted _ it to be inevitable that they would merge back into the same track eventually, even just as friends. 

She took out her phone, finding a text from what she assumed was Alex’s new number:  _ Hey, sorry, I think we swapped keys by accident? Kara let me in, no rush. _

She turned on her heel and looked at the blinking number above stainless steel doors; the elevator was working after all.

Getting a cab because it would be quicker, Maggie thought about how she never believed in things like destiny or fate, and had given up on the idea of soulmates after breaking up with Alex all those years ago. Yet here she was, ordering a cab to go back to Alex after a chance encounter in a city park.

The keys bit indents in her palm as she clutched them tight. Maybe she was wrong, maybe soulmates did exist. Maybe they just weren’t ready for each other when they were together.

She wondered if there’s a chance they’re ready for each other now. 

She shot back a confirmation text as the Uber arrived, and then rode off into National City’s streets. 

Alex was sitting on the steps of the apartment building when she got there, lost in her own world. Maggie slammed the door and got out so fast she almost stumbled onto the ground.

“Danvers!”

Alex looked up in surprise, Maggie’s keys in her palm. She stood, one hand gripping the railing for support. She held the keys up as if to say  _ wrong ones?  _ But Maggie shook her head, because that wasn’t entirely what she was there for. 

“I still have the puck,” she said, taking slow, calculated steps. “The air hockey puck. It sits on my desk at work.”

Frowning, Alex opened her mouth but she pressed on. 

“This isn’t a mistake,” she insisted, stopping with a fair distance between them.

Alex was looking at her like she had lost her mind, so Maggie held up the keys. 

“Yes, the keys were a mistake, but listen,” she rushed, chancing another step closer. “Do you think...I mean, we’ve changed so much, and been through so much in,  _ God _ , in seven years. But I never stopped loving you for a second, and I can’t help thinking that this is a sign, or something. And I just, I need to know if there’s a chance-” 

She stopped suddenly, realising that all of her unfiltered thoughts had just come out, and Alex was just staring at her in shocked silence.

“I just-” She became less and less sure of herself as time marched on, and no more words filled the empty space between them.

Finally, Alex let out a shuddery breath, coming down off of the stairs. “Oh, thank  _ God _ .”  

Keys clattered to the pavement as Alex strode towards her, slight limp and all, cupping her cheeks and kissing her. Maggie dropped Alex’s keys as she slid her arms around Alex’s waist to hold her closer, kissing back. 

Eventually, Alex pulled back and pressed their foreheads together. Her thumbs brushed against Maggie’s cheekbones. “I was waiting on you to come back to me.”

“I was only gone for forty minutes.”

Shaking her head, Alex murmured, “You’ve been gone a lot longer than that.” She stole another kiss and then, “Does this mean you want your jacket back?”

Maggie saw the grin, and realised she wasn’t talking about the jacket at all. She nuzzled their noses together, swaying them slightly under the streetlights. 

“Yeah, Danvers. I think I want it all back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, it was over. (Except for the 7 chapters of Alex's story...)

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
